X-bit labs

Three 2.5-Inch Hard Disk Drives with 120GB Storage Capacity (page 8)

Category: Storage

by Andrey Kuznetcov

[ 02/13/2007 | 11:19 AM ]

Performance in WinBench 99

First, you can have a look at the data-transfer diagrams of the three drives:

• Hitachi Travelstar 5K160 HTS541612J9AT00 (graph)
• Samsung SpinPoint M60S HM120JI (graph)
• Western Digital Scorpio WD1200BEVS (graph)

There’s no significant difference between the diagrams. The only thing we can see here is that the graph of the Western Digital Scorpio WD1200BEVS is very typical of adaptive formatting technology.

The other WinBench tests, except for the access time test, were performed on a 32GB partition created on the HDDs.

First, let’s check the drives out in FAT32.

You can see that the Samsung SpinPoint M60S HM120JI is the best of the three HDDs we are interested in. It is somewhat slower than the related model from the same manufacturer, which is actually the fastest of all in this test. The Western Digital Scorpio WD1200BEVS is fourth, but it has the highest Business Disk WinMark score. The Hitachi Travelstar 5K160 HTS541612J9AT00 is at the bottom of the diagram, even though it has a good Business Disk WinMark score.

The Samsung SpinPoint M60S HM120JI is victorious when we use NTFS. Third place goes to the Western Digital Scorpio WD1200BEVS. Alas, the Hitachi Travelstar 5K160 HTS541612J9AT00 looks utterly hopeless. It is again in the last position of the diagram and considerably worse even than the closest opponent.

This diagram shows the read speed at the beginning and end of the hard disks, which is indicative of the advantages of the tech process employed by the manufacturer. The Western Digital Scorpio WD1200BEVS takes third place and is the best among the tested trio. It is also a little faster than the related model from the same company. Next goes the duo of Samsung drives in which the HM120JI is somewhat slower. The Hitachi Travelstar 5K160 HTS541612J9AT00 finds itself in the last but one position.

The last diagram shows the measured access time of the HDDs. It is the highest, i.e. the worst, with the Samsung SpinPoint M60S HM120JI. The Hitachi Travelstar 5K160 HTS541612J9AT00 and the Western Digital Scorpio WD1200BEVS are somewhat better in this parameter – they take third and fourth places, respectively.