The last action of the test is copying files between two partitions.

The Samsung MP0402H is the fastest drive when copying the Install pattern from one partition to another. It is closely followed by the Hitachi HTS548040M9AT00 and by both 5400rpm Fujitsu drives.

There’s a big gap between the five leaders and the four outsiders. It’s rather sad to see such a low performance of the Toshiba 4026GAX. Having 16 megabytes of cache memory on board, it could have made a better use of it. :(

The Samsung has an even bigger advantage over the rest when processing large files. Mark also the success of the Seagate which has pushed down a couple of Fujitsu drive.

The Samsung is a little slower than the Seagate ST94811A with files of the Programs pattern, while the Hitachi HTS548040M9AT00 is the fastest device to copy files of the MP3 and Windows patterns.

That’s all for the NTFS file system. The results in FAT32 don’t differ much from what we have seen in NTFS, so we don’t think it necessary to discuss them at length. A few points will suffice:

The speeds of the hard disk drives are higher in FAT32, especially when they are copying small files like those the Programs and Windows patterns consist of.

The Samsung MP0402H feels more confident in FAT32 than in NTFS, and the Seagate ST94811A – vice versa. Save for these facts, the overall picture is the same.

You can see the results of FC-Test and view the diagrams for the FAT32 file system here.