The new 4TB WD Red Pro is an upgraded version of WD's popular Red NAS (Network Attached Storage). The Pro Reds have a rotation speed of 7200 RPM unlike their regular Red counterparts which are marketed as "IntelliPower" but actually spin at fixed speeds of 5400 or 5700 RPM depending on the exact model. Comparing the regular 3TB Red and the 4TB Pro shows that the pro version is significantly faster across the board. The biggest performance gains are seen in the small file 4K area and are a direct consequence of lower access times due to the higher rotation speed of the Pro Red. As well as offering better performance the Pro Reds have 5 year warranties vs 3 years on the regular Reds. Unfortunately it's not all good news as the Pro Red is priced around 50% higher than its regular Red sibling and thus currently represents average value for money at best. [Oct '14HDrivePro]
The 1TB Seagate Barracuda 2016 (ST1000DM010) has an impressive performance profile. With Sequential read/writes averaging 173 and 159 MBps respectively, the Barracuda can make short work of even moderately large backups. The small file (4K) performance profile is less impressive but still adequate with average read/writes coming in at 0.87 and 1.53 MBps respectively. For use as OS drives, rotational disks are quickly loosing market share to SSDs which offer orders of magnitude faster 4k read/write speeds. On the other hand cheap TLC based SSDs often have slower sustained write speeds than their rotational counterparts. Reasonably good overall performance can be achieved by using a TLC SSD to host the OS and a larger rotational drive such as the Barracuda for backups and media files. Larger capacity variants of this drive offer both better performance and better value for money. [Feb '17HDrivePro]
We calculate effective speed which measures performance for typical consumers. Effective speed is adjusted by current cost per GB to yield value for money. Our calculated values are checked against thousands of individual user ratings. The customizable table below combines these factors to bring you the definitive list of top HDDs. [HDrivePro]
Welcome to our PC speed test tool. UserBenchmark will test your PC and compare the results to other users with the same components. You can quickly size up your PC, identify hardware problems and explore the best value for money upgrades.