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When referring to drive capacity, one gigabyte, or GB, equals one billion bytes and one terabyte, or TB, equals one
trillion bytes. Your computer’s operating system may use a different standard of measurement and report a lower
capacity. In addition, some of the listed capacity is used for formatting and other functions, and thus will not be
available for data storage. Actual quantities will vary based on various factors, including file size, file format, features
and application software. Actual data rates may vary depending on operating environment and other factors. The
export or re-export of hardware or software containing encryption may be regulated by the U.S. Department of
Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security (for more information, visit www.bis.doc.gov), and controlled for import
and use outside of the U.S. Seagate reserves the right to change, without notice, product offerings or specifications.
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The Serial ATA interface provides several advantages over the traditional (parallel) ATA interface. The primary
advantages include:
• Easy installation and configuration with true plug-and-play connectivity. It is not necessary to set any jumpers
or other configuration options.
• Thinner and more flexible cabling for improved enclosure airflow and ease of installation.
• Scalability to higher performance levels.
In addition, Serial ATA makes the transition from parallel ATA easy by providing legacy software support. Serial
ATA was designed to allow users to install a Serial ATA host adapter and Serial ATA disk drive in the current
system and expect all of the existing applications to work as normal.
The Serial ATA interface connects each disk drive in a point-to-point configuration with the Serial ATA host
adapter. There is no master/slave relationship with Serial ATA devices like there is with parallel ATA. If two drives
are attached on one Serial ATA host adapter, the host operating system views the two devices as if they were both
“masters” on two separate ports. This essentially means both drives behave as if they are Device 0 (master)
devices.
The host adapter may, optionally, emulate a master/slave environment to host software where two
Note
The Serial ATA host adapter and drive share the function of emulating parallel ATA device behavior to provide
backward compatibility with existing host systems and software. The Command and Control Block registers, PIO
and DMA data transfers, resets, and interrupts are all emulated.The Serial ATA host adapter contains a set of
registers that shadow the contents of the traditional device registers, referred to as the Shadow Register Block. All
Serial ATA devices behave like Device 0 devices. For additional information about how Serial ATA emulates
parallel ATA, refer to the “Serial ATA International Organization: Serial ATA Revision 3.2”. The specification can be
downloaded from www.sata-io.org.
devices on separate Serial ATA ports are represented to host software as a Device 0 (master) and Device
1 (slave) accessed at the same set of host bus addresses. A host adapter that emulates a master/slave
environment manages two sets of shadow registers. This is not a typical Serial ATA environment.
Unless otherwise noted, all specifications are measured under ambient conditions, at 25°C, and nominal power.
For convenience, the phrases the drive and this drive are used throughout this manual to indicate the following
drive models:
ST3000VX005ST2000VX005ST1000VX003
2.1Specification summary tables
The specifications listed in the following tables are for quick reference. For details on specification measurement
or definition, see the appropriate section of this manual.
Table 1 Drive specifications summary for 3TB, 2TB and 1TB models
asked to provide the drive serial number, model number (or part number) and
country of purchase. The system will display the warranty information for the drive.
Load/Unload cycles300K at 25°C, 50% rel. humidity
Supports Hotplug operation per the
Serial ATA Revision 3.2 specification
*One GB equals one billion bytes and 1TB equals one trillion bytes when referring to hard drive capacity. Accessible capacity may vary depending
on operating environment and formatting.
**During periods of drive idle, some offline activity may occur according to the S.M.A.R.T. specification, which may increase acoustic and power
* One GB equals one billion bytes and 1TB equals one trillion bytes when referring to hard drive capacity. Accessible capacity may vary depending
on operating environment and formatting.
Guaranteed
sectors
Bytes per sector
4096
(512 bytes per sector emulated
at the interface)
2.2.1LBA mode
When addressing these drives in LBA mode, all blocks (sectors) are consecutively numbered from 0 to n–1, where
n isthe number of guaranteed sectors as defined above.
See Section 4.3.1, "Identify Device command" (words 60-61 and 100-103) for additional information about 48-bit
addressing support of drives with capacities over 137GBs.
2.3Default logical geometry
CylindersRead/write headsSectors per track
16,3831663
LBA mode
When addressing these drives in LBA mode, all blocks (sectors) are consecutively numbered from 0 to n–1, where
n isthe number of guaranteed sectors as defined above.
Seek measurements are taken with nominal power at 25°C ambient temperature. All times are measured using
drive diagnostics. The specifications in the table below are defined as follows:
• Track-to-track seek time is an average of all possible single-track seeks in both directions.
• Average seek time is a true statistical random average of at least 5000 measurements of seeks between
random tracks, less overhead.
Typical seek times (ms)
Track-to-track
Average
Average latency
These drives are designed to consistently meet the seek times represented in this manual. Physical
Note
seeks, regardless of mode (such as track-to-track and average), are expected to meet the noted values.
However, due to the manner in which these drives are formatted, benchmark tests that include
command overhead or measure logical seeks may produce results that vary from these specifications.
The drive receives DC power (+5V or +12V) through a native SATA power connector. (Refer to Figure 3).
2.8.1Power consumption
Power requirements for the drives are listed in Table 3 on page 12. Typical power measurements are based on an
average of drives tested, under nominal conditions, using 5.0V and 12.0V input voltage at 25°C ambient
temperature.
• Spinup power
Spinup power is measured from the time of power-on to the time that the drive spindle reaches operating
speed.
• Read/write power and current
Read/write power is measured with the heads on track, based on a 16-sector write followed by a 32-ms delay,
then a 16-sector read followed by a 32-ms delay.
• Operating power and current (CE profile)
Operating power is measured by simulating a typical PVR operating environment, using a 50% write, 50%
read algorithm.
• Idle mode power
Idle mode power is measured with the drive up to speed, with servo electronics active and with the heads in a
random track location.
• Standby mode
During Standby mode, the drive accepts commands, but the drive is not spinning, and the servo and read/
write electronics are in power-down mode.