Performance in WinBench 99

We will use WinBench 99 to record the drives’ data-transfer graphs:

• Hitachi Travelstar 5K500, 500GB
• Samsung SpinPoint M6S, 320GB
• Toshiba MKxx52GSX, 320GB
• Western Digital Scorpio, 320GB

The next diagram compares the read speeds of the drives at the beginning and end of the partitions created on them.

Samsung’s HDD delivers the highest performance. Its platters seem to be just as dense as the Hitachi’s, and nothing should prevent the company from increasing the platter capacity from 160 to 167 gigabytes. The Toshiba shows the lowest speed both at the beginning and end.

Now let’s see what we have in the WinBench 99 tests performed for a 32GB partition. The results are sorted by the High-End Disk WinMark score.

WinBench 99 FAT 32 results

This rather old benchmark prefers the drive from Western Digital in the High-End part. But in the Business part the top position is shared by the Hitachi and Samsung.

WinBench 99 NTFS results

Neither Hitachi nor Samsung is brilliant in NTFS but the Toshiba drive goes neck and neck with the Western Digital in the Business subtest.