Testbed and Methods

We used the following software during our test session:

• FC-Test version 1.0;
• Winbench99 version 2.0;
• Intel IOMeter 2003.02.15.

We ran all benchmarks on the following test platform:

• Albatron PX865PE Pro II mainboard;
• Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz CPU;
• IBM DTLA-307015 15GB HDD;
• Radeon 7000 32MB graphics card;
• 256MB RAM;
• Microsoft Windows 2000 OS with Service Pack 4.

For our tests we connected the drive to a USB 2.0 port on the mainboard and formatted it for NTFS file system with the cluster of default size and for FAT32 file system with a 32KB cluster.

Unfortunately, we haven’t got any statistics for the portable drives with 40GB storage capacity. The only results we have are those for Lacie Mobile Hard Drive. To tell the truth, this comparison will not be quite correct, because Lacie uses a 4,200rpm disk drive for its solution. But on the other hand, the Lacie drive supports more efficient IEEE1394a (FireWire) interface. So, it is still a question, which of the two is going to win this race.

Let’s find it out now.