Performance in FC-Test

Unlike the synthetic WinBench, FC-Test allows measuring the performance of a hard disk drive in more realistic and “transparent” tests. Instead of some general performance showings, hard disk drives are evaluated by their success at processing certain file patterns. The speed is calculated basing on the time it takes the drive to perform writing, reading and copying of the patterns.

Windows and Programs patterns consist of many small-size files, while MP3, ISO and Install patterns include fewer files of a bigger size. For the copy operations two 32GB partitions were created on the drives. The patterns were then copied within one partition (copy near) and from one partition to another (copy far).

We’re going to begin with the FAT32 file system. The first diagram shows you the speed of creating (i.e. writing) files. Alas, the Momentus is hopelessly slow compared to the remaining drives in all our patterns. Writing isn’t among its strong sides, definitely.

The next graph represents the reading speeds of the devices. The Seagate doesn’t look hopeless anymore, but is closely following the leader, the drive from Hitachi. The Momentus is especially good at processing patterns that consist of many small-size files.

When copying files within one partition, the drive from Seagate is far behind the drives from Hitachi and Toshiba. Its performance equals that of the Toshiba device: the Momentus is faster in three patterns with large files and slower in two patterns with small files.

The last test action – copying from one partition to another – allows the Momentus 5400.2 to take the third place as it is always faster than the drive from Toshiba. It is also much slower than the drives from Hitachi and Samsung, though (the Seagate is closer to the leaders when processing two patterns with many small files). The certain improvement of the results of the Seagate drive compared to the previous test must be again due to its higher data density, which allows to spend less time on moving the read/write heads about.