X-bit labs

Seagate Momentus 5400.2 2.5” Hard Disk Drive Review (page 2)

Category: Storage

by Andrey Kuznetcov

[ 12/09/2004 | 10:43 PM ]

Performance in WinBench 99

I’m going to begin the classical WinBench 99 test from viewing the data-transfer graph of the drive.

The data-transfer line shown on the diagram has no obvious slumps, but is rather steadily going downwards. This is indirect evidence of the good quality of the platters.

The first table and the first diagram reflect the performance of the drive in the FAT32 file system, and we’ve got a queer result from the very start: Seagate’s new HDD has a much lower High-End Disk WinMark score compared to its own Business Disk WinMark score. This is an outstanding event in hard disk drive tests and it is probably explained by the fact that we’ve got a presale sample of the Momentus 2, probably with some flaws in the firmware. Since we traditionally sort the results by the High-End Disk WinMark parameter as it is the more important, the Seagate drive finds itself on the last line, losing to the 4200rpm device even. On the other hand, the Momentus 5400.2 has a much higher Business Disk WinMark score compared to the other participants. Well, it should have had a similar advantage in the other test, too.

The table and the diagram show you the results of the drives when the first 32 gigabytes of their storage space are in use. You can see that thanks to its higher data density Seagate’s drive have improved its WinMark scores more compared to the opponents, both in relative and absolute estimation, but the overall situation remains the same: the Momentus 5400.2 outperforms its rivals in Business Disk WinMark and loses to them in High-End Disk WinMark.