Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB Review

Testing:

In the world of computing, everyone likes a computer that can start up and shut down quickly. The ability to boot into your system as fast as possible allows you to start the tasks you set out to do that much quicker, not to mention the older you get the greater the chance is that you'll forget what you wanted to use the computer for in the first place! The sweet spot is about 30 seconds or less. With conventional hard drives it is possible, but very hard to attain this "golden" 30-second time. With the speed of SSDs, it should be easier, but there is only one way to tell and that is to test it out. To run these tests, I used a stopwatch to calculate the number of seconds it took from pressing the power button on the case, to having a fully functioning desktop. For the shut down test, I timed from the click of the shut down button in the start menu, until power was off to the system.

While all the mechanical drives have a 7200RPM spindle speed, the 3TB drive is the fastest mechanical drive to boot to the desktop. Sure, the differential between the highest and lowest mechanical drive is only four seconds, but faster is faster any which way you look at it. Both of the SATA 6Gb/s Barracuda XT drives shut down in the same time frame, with only the Mushkin SSD being faster, as expected.