Conclusion

Now it’s time to draw some practical conclusion from today’s tests.

First, “professional” hard disk drives haven’t showed any great advantages over “desktop” HDDs in terms of performance. I didn’t benchmark the drives under vibration, but anyway…

Second, you could see the “benefits” from the support for NCQ technology. I mean in tests that emulate server-like operation modes of the disk subsystem.

Third, despite the declared support for NCQ by the drives from Seagate and Maxtor, it was the drive that doesn’t officially support it that really utilized that technology to a positive effect. The NCQ support in Seagate’s and Maxtor’s drives is a topic for a separate investigation.

Fourth, the Hitachi drive benefited from having five platters in one test only: when I deliberately narrowed the test’s operating zone. Otherwise, this HDD would lose either because or its low areal density or because or its small cache buffer. So, I wish I could test the T7K500 model, too.

Fifth, I recommend you to take notice of the WD drives. The company has made a real breakthrough with its xxxxKS models!

To be continued…