After we posted our first Roundup of 6 Leading 7200rpm Hard Disk Drives of the Year 2001, we were simply buried under the whole bunch of e-mails asking: " And what about 5400rpm HDDs?". Well, we have to admit that it was a mistake of ours not to mention that there would be a roundup of 5,400rpm hard disk drives coming soon. But could you really believe that we would allow this awful unfairness to happen? :)

Of course, we have already tested many of these hard disk drives in our testlab, but it took us a little bit more time to double check some interesting phenomena.

Although the manufacturers lay themselves out trying to reduce the price (and performance) gap between the drives featuring 5,400rpm and 7,200rpm spindle rotation speed, the users are still hunting for drives with less rpm. What do they find so attractive about the drives with lower rotation speed? Is it lower price, higher reliability or lower noise level? It's hard to say… One thing is clear, however: every year the users need a few million HDDs with 5,400rpm rotation speed…

And what about the performance of hard drives with 5,400rpm rotation speed, which are available in the today's market? We will try to answer this question and many other ones in the today's roundup.

Testing Participants

Like in the previous article, we decided to take a look at 6 HDDs. Here they are:

IBM Deskstar 40GV (DTLA 305040): This is a very vivid representative of the leaving generation. IBM is discontinuing (or has already discontinued) the entire family of its 5,400rpm HDDs, as they were pressed too hard by the competitors' pricing policies.

Western Digital Caviar 400AB: This is an extremely interesting hard disk drive boasting not only unusual configuration but also working at unusual speed. (Review)

Maxtor DiamondMax D540X-4K: This is a new HDD from Maxtor (which used to be an older Quantum development). It represents the newest HDD generation and uses the today's largest platter of 40GB capacity.

Fujitsu MPG3409AT-E: For our tests we selected a 40GB model with a 2MB cache buffer. However, unfortunately, we have to point out that it seems to be the last show of the IDE HDD from Fujitsu. (see this news story)

Seagate U5: This hard disk drive also represents a generation, which is little by little leaving the market. However, it is still available in retail, so we included it in the roundup. (Review)

Seagate U6: This hard drive belongs to the latest 40GB-platter HDD generation and should replace completely the outdating Seagate U5 model. (Review)

Here is a comparative table of the hard disk drives features. Have a look:

While the cost of SDRAM chips moves rapidly down to the zero mark, the presence of only 512KB of cache memory by IBM 3050x0 and Seagate U5 looks like a pure mockery, to tell the truth…

Also we can notice that the HDDs can be divided into several groups judging by the platter size. IBM Deskstar 40GV (DTLA 305040), Seagate U5 and Fujitsu MPG3409AT-E use 20GB platters, WD Caviar 400AB uses 30GB platters, and Seagate U6 and Maxtor DiamondMax D540X-4K use 40GB platters.

Testbed and Methods

We tested the newcomer in the following test system:

• Intel Pentium III (Coppermine) 600MHz CPU;
• ASUS CUBX-E mainboard, bios 1007A;
• 2x128MB PC133 SDRAM by Hyundai;
• Matrox Millennium 4MB graphics card;
• Windows 98/Windows 2000 Pro.

In order to check the HDDs performance in different UDMA modes, we had to use the following controllers:

• UDMA33: the controller integrated into i440BX chipset;
• UDMA66: Promise Ultra66 controller;
• UDMA100: integrated Promise Ultra100 controller.

For the Promise controllers we used the drivers ver. 1.60 (build 33).

The disk drives were connected as Master-units to a separate IDE-channel. DMA support in Windows was enabled. We used FAT32 and NTFS file systems to format each of them as one logical drive of the maximum size with the default cluster. All the tests were run 4 times and then the average results were taken for the diagrams. The HDDs didn't rest for cooling down between the tests.

Here are the benchmarks used:

• Windows 98 WinBench 99 1.2
• Adaptec Threadmark 2.0
• Windows 2000 WinBench 99 1.2
• HDTach 2.61
• IOMeter 1999.10.20

Performance

Access Time

As usual, we resorted to two tests to find out the average access time: HDTach and Winbench:

Hm, as for IBM and Fujitsu HDDs, there are no questions about them. The average seek time claimed by the specs is almost equal to the calculated results (the difference can be regarded as caused by controller overhead and some other trifles like that). Maxtor seems to have been too careful about the specs, having claimed too big average seek time, and Seagate… Seagate measures the seek time for the specs with the help of a special controller, which works without involving the HDD's major electronics. The strange thing about this method is that it shows very big difference between the drives from the U family and those from Barracuda ATA IV one.

If you need more info on the relation between average access time and average seek time, please consult the corresponding chapter of our article called "HDD Roundup: 7 Hard Disk Drives with 20GB Platters".

Sustained Linear Read Speed

The diagram below shows the linear read speeds shown by the HDDs tested on the tracks in the beginning and in the end.

As we can see, all the current 5,400rpm HDDs either managed to overcome the 30MB/sec bar, or are very-very close to it. Maxtor D540X-4K appeared the winner here, though its result didn't reach the top of the 5,400rpm HDDs abilities.

HDTach 2.61

At first, let's take a look at the Read Burst Speed (from the buffer):

Well, the Maxtor baby looks very nice, and Fujitsu showed nothing special. As usual, Seagate and Fujitsu HDDs didn't work any wonders in this test…

As we remember, the Fujitsu MPG3409AH-E with 20GB platters and 7,200rpm spindle rotation speed (described in this roundup), showed very high average read speed, however, its 5,400rpm colleague didn't stand out in any way against the competitors' background (although we have to admit that the third position is far not the worst achievement). Maxtor D540X-4K is the leader in this benchmark, which is quite logical as it boasts the highest Disk Transfer Rate (beginning).

And in write speed tests, WD400AB appeared not bad at all, even though it didn't perform that well in read speed tests. However, the laurels will be still given to Maxtor HDD, which managed to leave everyone else behind in two UDMA-modes out of the three.

WinBench99 1.2 for Windows98

In Business Disk WinMark the leading position is occupied by Maxtor D540X-4K HDD, and the second position is attacked by three participants at a time. WD400AB, Fujitsu MPG AT-E and Seagate U5 get involved into a really cut-throat competition trying to dash ahead of the rest. You are probably curious to find out where Seagate U6 actually is… Unfortunately, it yielded even to its own predecessor, U5. The last one here appeared IBM DTLA.

Here we have to draw your attention to the fact that Fujitsu MPG AH-E HDD performed really well in High-End Disk WinMark for Windows98 (see our Roundup of 6 Leading 7200rpm Hard Disk Drives of the Year 2001). And now that we see its counterpart, Fujitsu MPG AT-E, perform brilliantly as well, we start thinking that it wasn't a coincidence.

Anyway, Maxtor D540X-4K is also very fast, so it's up to you to choose the winner now. :)

Adaptec Threadmark 2.0

Now let's see how fast the drives work with the several streams of data simultaneously:

Well, it seems that heredity matters a lot not only for Fujitsu HDDs but also for those from Western Digital. When we compared the drives with 7,200rpm rotation speed, the solution from Western Digital, WD400BB, won the race. Now its younger brother took the lead. Actually, we like it that the results repeat, and what about you?

Fujitsu MPG AT-E also proved well-optimized for processing streaming data and turned out the second prize winner. Maxtor drive, on the contrary, appeared not that convincing any more.

WinBench99 1.2 for Win2000 (FAT32)

Here the untiring Maxtor D540X-4K tried to beat the leader, WD400AB. Being so greatly involved into this duel, the HDDs left all the rest far behind.

And in High-End benchmark Maxtor took its revenge on WD400AB. The third position was kindly given to Fujitsu. As for the Seagate fellows, the mysticism continues: U5 again surpassed U6 HDD.

WinBench99 1.2 for Win2000 (NTFS)

In NTFS the picture remained the same as in FAT32. In Business Disk WinMark Western Digital WD400AB wins.

In High-End benchmark, the victory goes to Maxtor D540X-4K. And again Maxtor and WD drives turn far ahead of all the rest. The least thing to point out here is that Fujitsu also looks quite good in High-End Disk WinMark, just like in FAT32.

Intel IOMeter

As usual, we took a closer look at FileServer, DataBase and WorkStation patterns. We compared the Sum Total value, which is calculated taking into consideration the results obtained with Light, Moderate and Heavy loads (16, 64 and 256 requests). Of course, the higher is the value, the better:

Do you see how close the WD400AB got to IBM DTLA (the traditional IOMeter leader). It is not for nothing, actually. Although WD400AB features slower heads positioning, it makes up for it by faster rotation speed (WD200AB, WD300AB, WD400AB and WD600AB, all rotated at 6,000rpm: see our Western Digital Caviar 400AB HDD Review for details). Probably it is due to new technologies used for WD's firmware that tell (maybe it is IBM, which shared its rich experience here).

By the way, Maxtor looks not that bad at all here. It even managed to outperform WD400AB in WorkStation pattern.

Temperature

To measure the temperature we resorted to DTemp utility, which we have already used in our Seagate Barracuda ATA IV Review. The room temperature stayed around 22^oC, and the measurements were made after more than 2.5 hours of IOMeter tests running. Since all the hard disk drives tested support temperature monitoring via SMART, no special devices were needed. In fact, we did use a special device to observe that the room temperature didn't change. Here is what we've got:

As you can see from this diagram, the lowest temperature was shown by single-platter Seagate U6 HDD and Maxtor D540X-4K HDD (the rubber SeaShield seems to be a bit disturbing for the Seagate U6 drive, though). And the most heating drives were those built of 2 platters, featuring faster heads and extraordinary spindle rotation speed.

Conclusion

Well, this comparison let us discover a lot of interesting things.

First, in the market there appeared one more HDD with 5,400rpm spindle rotation speed and 40GB platters showing really outstanding performance: Maxtor DiamondMax D540X-4K. This drive seems to us the best solution from the performance and reliability point of view (we suppose that it is a really reliable model judging by its simple construction, low heat dissipation and Quantum's reputation).

Secondly, we found out that Fujitsu MPG3409AT-E HDD is quite capable of competing with the "youngsters" (especially in Windows98) despite the fact that it belongs to the previous 20GB-platter generation.

Thirdly, we were shocked with the results shown by Seagate U5 against the background of its elder brother, U6…

All in all, we would like to note that the today's HDDs with 5,400rpm rotation speed, yield a really little bit to IDE HDDs with faster rotating spindles and at the same time boast really attractive costs. On the other hand, there are expected new 7,200rpm HDDs in the nearest future and they are very likely to increase the performance gap between the 5,400rpm and 7,200rpm families.

Well, we'll see...