X-bit labs

Two External Hard Disk Drives with 400GB and 500GB Storage Capacity (page 5)

Category: Storage

by Andrey Kuznetcov

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

Performance in FC-Test

As always, FC-Test is the last of our tests. Being indicative of the real-life performance of hard disk drives, this benchmarking tool measures the time it takes to create (i.e. to write), to read and to copy a few sets of files that differ in the size and number of files included. Knowing this time we can calculate the real speed of the drive.

The Windows and Programs patterns consist of many small files, while the other three patterns include several large files. Two 32GB partitions are created on the drives for the copy operations and the file patterns are first copied within the same partition (Copy Near) and then from one partition to another (Copy Far).

The NTFS results are published first.

The file creation diagram is a picture of a complete victory of the external drive from Maxtor. It is much better than its opponents working via the same interface and it has the highest absolute speeds, too. We can again observe the higher efficiency of the FireWire interface here, especially with the Maxtor drive. These results agree with the data we got when measured the linear read speed with IOMeter.

This shows how fast the drives can read the different sets of files. The Maxtor enjoys a big advantage, again. It is far ahead of the Seagate when using the FireWire interface. The latter only gets closer in the ISO pattern which includes a few large-size files. The results of the linear read speed test in IOMeter may give us an explanation: the drives differed there the least when the data chunk size was the biggest. The same is true for the USB 2.0 interface: the Maxtor wins again and its speed in some cases is higher or comparable to the performance of the FireWire-connected Seagate.

Copying files within one partition confirms the superiority of the Maxtor. It is the best irrespective of the interface. Moreover, it is faster than the Seagate when is attached via USB 2.0 while the latter is connected via the more efficient FireWire interface.

The Maxtor OneTouch III is also better than the Seagate at copying files from one partition to another. It again wins with all the five patterns and is again faster with USB 2.0 than the Seagate with FireWire.