X-bit labs

Passport from Western Digital: Portable USB Hard Disk Drive Review (page 4)

Category: Storage

by Andrey Kuznetcov

[ 04/06/2005 | 04:38 PM ]

Performance in WinBench 99

Among the results obtained in the classical WinBench 99 testing package, we suggest taking a look at the internal data transfer graph first:

The graph for the disk read speed from the surface looks somewhat unusual. The line on the graph goes a little bit up in the middle of the disk space, while the results in the beginning and in the end are not very diverse. All in all, I would say that the read speed turned out not very high.

At least it is significantly lower than the linear read speed demonstrated by the ATA model of WD Scorpio drive.

Judging by the linear read graph for WD Passport, we dare suppose that it performed relatively slowly here because of the low speed of the IDE-USB bridge used in it.

Let’s take a look at the performance of WD Passport in WinMark test. We will start with NTFS file system. The diagram above shows that the external drive from Western Digital has a slight performance advantage over the opponent. The same is true for Business Disk and High-End WinMark tests.

When we switch to FAT32 file system, the situation changes to just the opposite. Now the fastest one is the Mobile hard Drive, which outpaces Passport from WD in all aspects.

At the data transfer rate diagram for the beginning and the end of the disk drive we see WD Passport yield to Lacie in the read speed in the beginning of the logical disk drive (we have already described the reasons for this performance difference). However, it gets ahead of the competitor when it comes to read speed in the end of the logical drive.

The access time diagram shows that the solution from Western Digital is an indisputable winner here. This is a pretty logical situation, actually, keeping in mind that the spindle rotation speed of the Passport drive is 5,400rpm against 4,200rpm by the competitor.