X-bit labs

External Hard Disk Drives Roundup: 160GB Storage Capacity (page 11)

Category: Storage

by Aleksey Meyev

[ 02/27/2008 | 09:51 AM ]

Performance in WinBench 99

First, you can have a look at the surface read speed graphs of the drives:

• Fujitsu HandyDrive (graph)
• Maxtor OneTouch III (graph)
• Seagate PEHD (graph)
• TEAC HD-15 PUK-B (graph)
• TEAC HD-15 PUS, USB (graph)
• TEAC HD-15 PUS, eSATA (graph)
• Toshiba PX1270E-1G16 (graph)
• Transcend TS160GSJ25B (graph)
• ZIV 2 (graph)
• ZIV Pro, USB (graph)
• ZIV Pro, FireWire (graph)

The eSATA interface is the only one that draws the same sloping data-transfer diagram that is typical of HDDs attached directly to the controller. The USB interface obviously limits the HDD’s performance as indicated by the flat stretch of the graph – some of the graphs even go up somewhat due to the specifics of the devices’ controllers. The FireWire interface provides higher bandwidth, yet it is still not high enough to fully reveal the potential of a modern 2.5” HDD.

The data-transfer speed at the end of the disk (the slowest area of the disk space) depends mostly on the specific HDD model (soon the USB bandwidth is not going to be enough even at that point, though) while the speed at the beginning is limited by the interface. The USB interface has long become a bottleneck as you can see comparing the results of the Teac HD-15 PUS connected via its different interfaces. Among the USB-interfaced drives the Teac HD-15 PUK is considerably faster than the others. The Toshiba PX1270E-1G16 is the worst drive in this test.

Now I will compare the results of the drives in the integral tests of WinBench 99. The Seagate and Maxtor did not take part in this test due to technical reasons. A 32GB partition is created on the drive and formatted in FAT32:

For more detailed FAT32 results click here.

The eSATA interface is superior to the others (it is about two times as fast as the others in Business Disk WinMark 99). The FireWire-connected ZIV Pro is second just as you could have expected. When attached via USB, these two drives take last places while the best drives with a USB interface are the Teac HD-15 PUK-B and Fujitsu HandyDrive.

For more detailed NTFS results click here.

We’ve got the same leader here, and its advantage in Business Disk WinMark 99 has become even larger. The second place goes to the Teac HD-15 PUK-B that has pushed the FireWire-connected ZIV Pro to third place, but the difference is small between them. The USB-connected Teac HD-15 PUS is the slowest drive among the USB models.