Performance in FC Test

This is going to be our last article to use the FC Test version 0.5.3 – all subsequent reviews will offer you the results of the FC Test version 1.0. We mention this fact to confess to our earlier mistakes: read speeds are somewhat overestimated in this review since we didn’t restart the computer between file creation and reading operations.

Anyway, we wield this testing tool according to our traditional methodology: we create two logical volumes, 32GB each, and format them in NTFS and FAT32. Then we create a set of files on the first logical volume, and read it from the drive, and copy it into a folder on the first logical drive (within one partition – copy near) and on the second logical drive (to another partition – copy far). We perform these operations with five file sets:

• Install (414 files, 575MB total size);
• ISO (3 files, 1.6GB total size);
• MP3 (271 files, 1GB total size);
• Programs (8504 files, 1.4GB total size);
• Windows (9006 files, 1.06GB total size).

We start out with the NTFS file system, much popular today, thanks to Microsoft. We’ve got quite a lot of drives, so we’ll be discussing each operation for each file set independently. So, we first create a set of files on the disk.

The creation of the Install pattern files:

The drives from Maxtor are the best at creating Install files. Only two devices from Samsung (SP1614C, SP1614N) and one Hitachi (IC35L180AVV207-1) try to show some competition. That’s not a surprise – we saw these models getting to top positions in previous tests, too.

Next goes the ISO pattern:

The two Maxtors have an even greater advantage at writing ISO-like files. The Samsung SP1614N outperforms the Hitachi IC35L180AVV207-1. Something is wrong with the rest of the Hitachi team, the members of the Deskstar 7K250 family – writing big files doesn’t seem to be among of their fortes.

The six leaders remain at their positions creating MP3 files, while the seventh-place Seagate ST3160023AS with firmware 3.05 (remember that tricky drive?) is closely followed now by the other drives of that model but with different firmware versions as well as by the ST3160023A-fw3.06. So we’ve got a Seagate clan right in the middle of the diagram.

When creating small files of the Programs pattern, the Hitachi team woke up. The IC35L180AVV207-1 rose to the third position, and the other three models made it to the “top ten”. The WD1600LB suddenly improves its standing, soaring up from the 18-th to the seventh place.

The rather old Hitachi IC35L180AVV207-1 drive speeds up in the Windows pattern to step on the very top (we remind you that this drive has three platters and thus has an advantage over two-platter models). The drives from Samsung missed that spurt and even let the three-platter Maxtor 6Y160L0 to come ahead, in spite of its small 2MB buffer.