X-bit labs

Roundup: Five 2.5-Inch Hard Disk Drives with 250GB Storage Capacity (page 9)

Category: Storage

by Aleksey Meyev

[ 01/11/2008 | 03:39 PM ]

Performance in FC-Test

Now we will check performance of the hard disk drives with the FC-Test program. Two 32GB partitions are created on the drives and formatted in NTFS and then in FAT32. After that a file-set is created of the hard disk. It is then read from the disk, copied within the same partition and then copied into another partition. The time taken to perform these operations is measured and the speed of the drive is calculated.

To remind you, the Windows and Programs file-sets consist of a large number of small files whereas the other three patterns (ISO, MP3, and Install) include a few large files each.

We’ll discuss the FAT32 results first.

It’s all just as you could have expected: the HDD from Western Digital is ahead with every file-set, especially with large file-sets. Second place goes to the Samsung which seems to make excuses for its poor performance in the IOMeter tests. The Hitachi is the worst of the 5400rpm models, being only better than the Fujitsu MHY2250BH with the ISO file-set. The 4200rpm model is far slower than the others.

Every HDD, excepting the MHX2250BT, copes with this test equally well. The HDD from Western Digital isn’t too far ahead while the MHY2250BH is not too far behind the others.

The HDDs differ more in the copying tasks. The drives from Hitachi and Western Digital are in the lead with large files, and the WD2500BEVS is somewhat slower than the leader. The Samsung is ahead with small files when the HDD from Western Digital sinks to third place, outperforming the two Fujitsu HDDs. The Hitachi seems to be the overall winner of the copying tests.

Now let’s see what we have in the same tests but when the HDDs are formatted in NTFS.

The WD2500DEVS is unrivalled at writing. The HDDs line up just as they did in the FAT32 test, except that the MHY2250BH outperforms not only the HTS542525K9SA00 but also the HM250JI in the Windows pattern.

There are some minor changes in the results of the reading test. The HDD from Western Digital is habitually in the lead, followed by the Samsung. The Fujitsu drives obviously feel better working with NTFS. Of course, this cannot help the MHX2250BT leave the last place but the MHY2250BH is much more confident now.

The Hitachi is still the best drive when it comes to copying within the same partition. The Samsung has become somewhat slower with small files but faster with large ones than in FAT32. The HDD from Western Digital wins at copying from one partition to another again. The HDDs from Fujitsu have low speeds when copying files.