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Test Results
Before proceeding to the results, let’s keep in mind that the reviewed hard disk drive was benchmarked on two quite different platforms in two quite different roles. So, it’d be downright incorrect to compare the results we got on each platform between themselves.
Winbench 99
- Notebook:
- Mobile rack:
Winbech 99 results:
| Transfer Begining, KB/s | Transfer End, KB/s | Disc Access, ms | Disk CPU Utilization, % | Business Disk WinMark, KB/s | High-End Disk Winmark, KB/s | AVS/Express, KB/s |
Seagate Momentus, Notebook | 34500 | 19200 | 15.8 | 1.16 | 5500 | 17600 | 18900 |
Seagate Momentus, Rack USB 2.0 | 29000 | 18800 | 16.6 | 4.19 | 10700 | 21700 | 20900 |
FrontPage, KB/s | MicroStation SE, KB/s | Photoshop 4.0, KB/s | Premiere 4.2, KB/s | Sound Forge 4.0, KB/s | Visual C++ 5.0, KB/s | |
Seagate Momentus, Notebook | 155000 | 15200 | 9160 | 12000 | 46000 | 16900 |
Seagate Momentus, Rack USB 2.0 | 200000 | 34600 | 8200 | 16600 | 34300 | 34600 |
The read graphs of the drive do differ on the two platforms. When installed as a system drive, the Momentus performs quite expectedly. It notches a high read speed for this type of drives. The internal transfer graph is a step curve with small jaggies that testifies high quality of the platter surface.
The second graph is a long horizontal line corresponding to the peak bandwidth of the USB 2.0 interface. Quite naturally, the read speed is smaller in this case. Moreover, the second graph has certain vertical sumps, although we may have expected the graph to be similar to the first one. The access time is smaller with USB 2.0, but still lies in the measurement error range. And quite predictably, the work across USB 2.0 consumes more CPU resources.
The Disk WinMark results suggest that the Momentus is working more efficiently when used as a mobile storage device. Both values (Business and High-End Disk WinMark) are noticeably higher in this case. The “mobile” Momentus wins most High-End Disk WinMark components, save for Sound Forge 4.0 and Photoshop 4.0.
You shouldn’t be surprised at these results. The testbeds are quite different and we may suppose the desktop PC has a better realization of disk subsystem operations. Moreover, don’t forget that WinBench tests are sensitive to the type and frequency of the CPU.
