X-bit labs

Two External Hard Disk Drives with 400GB and 500GB Storage Capacity (page 4)

Category: Storage

by Andrey Kuznetcov

[ 03/18/2006 | 10:50 AM ]

Performance in WinBench 99

• Maxtor F01G500 FireWire (Graph )
• Maxtor F01G500 USB 2.0 (Graph )
• Seagate ST3400801CB-RK FireWire (Graph )
• Seagate ST3400801CB-RK USB 2.0 (Graph )

The data-transfer graphs are almost perfectly flat and parallel to the X-axis with both the interfaces. It means the speed potential of the hard disk drives installed in the external enclosures is not fully utilized. The biggest performance loss occurs with your using the USB 2.0 interface, of course.

And now let’s examine the performance showings of the drives when we use the FAT32 file system. We’ll use shortened names for the drives and interfaces hereafter.

The external drive from Maxtor enjoys a considerable advantage over its opponent in this test and with any interface (we base our judgments on the High-End WinMark score in the first place). The Maxtor has a higher performance score even if you compare its USB 2.0 result with the Seagate’s FireWire one. So, the Maxtor OneTouch III wins this test, while the FireWire interface proves its higher efficiency once again.

We get a picture like in the previous test when we switch over to NTFS. Once again the FireWire interface is more efficient with either drive and the Maxtor is faster than the Seagate. The OneTouch III is again better than the Pushbutton Backup External Hard Drive even when the former is connected via USB 2.0 and the latter, via FireWire.

It’s not surprising that the data-transfer rate diagram shows superiority of the FireWire interface over USB 2.0. It is also clear that the speed characteristics of the Maxtor are better than those of the Seagate, especially with FireWire which doesn’t level the results of the drives as much as USB 2.0 does.

The external drive from Seagate manages to win one test as it has a better access time than its opponent, especially when it comes to the USB 2.0 interface. The drive from Maxtor looks somewhat sluggish in that case and you can’t explain it by the quiet operating mode of the heads because the Maxtor’s access time when connected via FireWire is considerably better and is then much closer to the results of the Seagate. The interface controller of the Maxtor drive may be the reason for such a misbalance.