Hard Game

This drive packs in its massive 4tb capacity on only 4 disk platters thanks to increased density of its data tracks.There are 340,000 tracks per inch to be exact.This drive also features Advanced Format 4k physical sectors with 512 byte emulation,64mb of ddr2 cache, and Seagates OptiCache and AcuTrac technologies are also present.All the same as the popular 3tb barracuda.However unlike the Barracuda drives this particular model is a 5,900 rpm drive.Yes a 5,900 rpm spindle speed disk drive.I was surprised myself as Seagate makes no note of the spindle speed on their packaging or on their website data that this drive is a 5,900 rpm drive.Checking Crystal Disk Info utility displayed the spindle rate accurately.Which I confirmed with Seagate support.I also asked Seagate support whether ERC or error recovery control was present and enabled on this drive and they said yes.That should give piece of mind to those wanting to use this drive in a NAS or any RAID configuration which Seagate suggests as a viable usage for these new Desktop drives.

So with a 5,900 rpm how does this drive perform?Well lets look at some benchmarks and find out.

With reads ranging from 78 mb/s to 171 mb/s this drive even with only 5,900 rpm isnt about that funny business.16.8ms is not quick but I wouldnt expect better with the lower spindle speed.A burst rate of 247 mb/s isnt as explosive as the 3tb barracuda and only will be felt with small files.CPU usage is low at 3.8%.I like my drives not to hog up resources.

With writes from 73 mb/s to 172 mb/s the big Seagate continues to go about its business quickly.All sequential numbers are better than my trusted 7,200 rpm Western Digital 2tb Black.Access time is something that the big Seagate cant beat my trusty Black drive in.At 17 ms is getting a bit slow and shows the fault of having a lower rpm.Burst rate came out slower but wont be a problem in real world usage.Cpu usage went up a bit during write operations but considering the size and performance of the drive it really isnt a CPU hog.

Again the big Seagate shows solid performance with Sequential data and larger random 512k blocks.With sequential reads at 148 mb/s and sequential writes at 146 mb/s it is faster in a straight line than my Black drive.4K and 4KQD32 performance is respectable for a hard drive but those fields are pathetic compared to solid state drives.

This drive handles all but the smallest transfer sizes like a champ.Read and writes peak at 155 mb/s and 154 mb/s respectively.

For now, Budgie Remix is an unofficial Ubuntu flavor however, its developers aim at making it an official member of the Ubuntu family. The next step towards this goal is to release Budgie Remix 16.04.1 in three months, followed by a first Budgie Remix 16.10 alpha in July.

Budgie Remix 16.04 is based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and it includes the latest Budgie Desktop 10.2.5. Budgie Desktop integrates tightly with the GNOME stack and it features a libmutter-based window manager and a customizable panel which includes an applet, notification, and customization center, called Raven.

I have to note that Budgie Desktop doesnt support AppIndicators and tray icons dont seem to work either, or at least some dont work (I tried Shutter and Transmission in Budgie Remix 16.04 and the tray icon didnt work for either of them), this being my only issue with Budgie desktop.

The new unofficial Ubuntu flavor already includes its own artwork, with custom Plymouth and LightDM theme, and the beautiful Arc GTK and Faba icon themes.

Since Budgie is a shell for GNOME, Budgie Remix 16.04 ships with GNOME Settings (Control Center / Settings Daemon):

Furthermore, Budgie Remix 16.04 includes Nautilus 3.18, and not the version available in the official Ubuntu 16.04 repositories, which is 3.14:

Thats possible because Budgie Remix is not an official Ubuntu flavor, so it uses a PPA by default, which provides not only Nautilus 3.18, but also the whole Budgie Desktop, artwork and so on.

You can use this PPA to try Budgie Desktop in Ubuntu, but keep in mind that it will update Nautilus to a version that doesnt have any Unity patches (you can lock the current Nautilus version to avoid that though).

Other applications included by default with Budgie Remix 16.04 include Plank (0.11.1) dock, which is used on the left of the screen with Intellihide and a beautiful theme called Arc by default, along with:

For installing new software and updates, Budgie Remix uses GNOME Software and Software Updater, just like Ubuntu (with Unity):

Under the hood, just like Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Budgie Remix includes GTK+ 3.18.9, Mesa 11.2.0, Xorg server 1.18.3 and the Ubuntu Linux Kernel 4.4.0-21, based on the upstream 4.4.6 Linux Kernel.

Download Budgie Remix 16.04