by Andrey Kuznetcov
03/18/2006 | 10:50 AM
Most often having an ordinary internal hard disk drive inside, external HDDs naturally have the same capacities and offer more storage space as soon as the capacities of the internal models increase. Today we’re going to review two high-capacity external drives from Seagate and Maxtor.
<%BANNER[article]%>As you probably know, they are going to join their production potential in near future and make a single entity on the market, but as for today, the companies are still separate and we will be discussing their products under the two respective brands. The top external HDD model from Seagate is currently 400GB big as opposed to the storage capacity of 500GB of the top model from Maxtor, and we should keep this difference in mind as we compare the two products.
We didn’t want to wait for the 500GB drive announced on the Seagate website to come out and decided to test the two available models so that the users who need a highest-capacity external storage device with a single HDD inside could make a well-judged shopping choice right now.
This model doesn’t differ much from other devices in the OneTouch series. The name of the series comes from the button on the front panel which performs an automatic data backup after a single press. The external aluminum case of a bluish gray color is rather thick, probably for better ventilation of the HDD contained inside. The slits in the case are made for the same purpose, too. We dismantled the device to show you its design, particularly a fan and vent holes in the internal casing. There are two FireWire ports, one USB 2.0 port, a power button and a power connector on the device’s back panel.
The 3.5” hard disk drive employed here has a storage capacity of 500GB and is equipped with a 16MB buffer. The spindle rotation speed is 7200rpm; the average seek time is less than 9 milliseconds. The drive supports two interfaces: FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394a, iLink, SPB-2) and USB 2.0. The effective bandwidth as specified by the manufacturer is 43MB/s for FireWire 400 and 33MB/s for USB 2.0. The drive is operable within a temperature range of 5 to 35°C. The dimensions of the external case are 136 x 65 x 217mm; the weight of the device is 1.45kg.
The device is accompanied with a quick start guide, USB cable, FireWire cable (6x6 pin), power adapter with a cord, and CD with data backup software (EMC Dantz Retrospect HD) and user manual.
The retail price of the drive is $470.
Seagate’s external drive is designed in the company’s traditional style, too. The case is made of black and gray plastic. You can position the drive upright by means of a special stand. As the name of the model suggests, there is a button here, too, that triggers a data backup procedure. A LED indicator of the drive activity is built into that button. Two FireWire ports, one USB 2.0 port and a power connector are located on the back panel of the drive. There are ventilation slits in the black plastic parts of the case.
The employed hard disk drive has a storage capacity of 400GB and an 8MB buffer. The spindle rotation speed is 7200rpm. The average seek time is 8.5 milliseconds. The device supports FireWire (IEEE1394a) and USB 2.0 interfaces. It can withstand a non-operating shock of 350Gs. The dimensions of the case are 181 x 57 x 165 millimeters; the weight is 1.2kg.
The drive comes with a quick start guide, USB cable, FireWire cable, power adapter with a cord, and CD with data backup software (BounceBack Express).
The retail price of the drive is $380.
We tested the external drives in the following benchmarks:
The testbed was configured like follows:
The USB 2.0 interface of the drives was tested using one of the mainboard’s ports. A FireWire 400 interface was provided by the mainboard’s onboard VIA VT6307 controller.
We will first measure sequential read and write speeds in IOMeter which can show the influence of the interface on the drive performance. So, the drive is processing a stream of read/write requests with a request queue depth of 4; the data block size was changed every minute. As a result, we can see the dependence of the drive’s sequential read/write speed on the size of the processed data block. Then we can compare these data for each interface, too.
The sequential read diagram shows the considerably higher efficiency of the FireWire interface. The external drives are both much faster when using it. Without doubt, this interface allows the drives to show more of their speed potential than the other interface does. You can also see that the linear read speed of the Maxtor drive is higher than its opponent’s at any data block size. The results the drives have working via USB 2.0 do not differ much as their performance is limited by the lower bandwidth of this interface. Such factors as the cache buffer size may account for the variations in performance of the two devices in this case. We’ll check this out below in other tests.
Displaying the linear write speeds of the drives, the second diagram has much in common with the previous one. Of course, the speeds are lower here, yet we again see that the FireWire interface allows achieving the highest performance with either drive, but especially with the Maxtor. The difference between FireWire and USB 2.0 is less conspicuous with the Seagate which may be an indication that its write speed is in fact lower than the opponent’s. You can also see again that the USB 2.0 graphs of both the drives don’t differ much because the insufficient interface bandwidth levels their performance.
The data-transfer graphs are almost perfectly flat and parallel to the X-axis with both the interfaces. It means the speed potential of the hard disk drives installed in the external enclosures is not fully utilized. The biggest performance loss occurs with your using the USB 2.0 interface, of course.
And now let’s examine the performance showings of the drives when we use the FAT32 file system. We’ll use shortened names for the drives and interfaces hereafter.
The external drive from Maxtor enjoys a considerable advantage over its opponent in this test and with any interface (we base our judgments on the High-End WinMark score in the first place). The Maxtor has a higher performance score even if you compare its USB 2.0 result with the Seagate’s FireWire one. So, the Maxtor OneTouch III wins this test, while the FireWire interface proves its higher efficiency once again.
We get a picture like in the previous test when we switch over to NTFS. Once again the FireWire interface is more efficient with either drive and the Maxtor is faster than the Seagate. The OneTouch III is again better than the Pushbutton Backup External Hard Drive even when the former is connected via USB 2.0 and the latter, via FireWire.
It’s not surprising that the data-transfer rate diagram shows superiority of the FireWire interface over USB 2.0. It is also clear that the speed characteristics of the Maxtor are better than those of the Seagate, especially with FireWire which doesn’t level the results of the drives as much as USB 2.0 does.
The external drive from Seagate manages to win one test as it has a better access time than its opponent, especially when it comes to the USB 2.0 interface. The drive from Maxtor looks somewhat sluggish in that case and you can’t explain it by the quiet operating mode of the heads because the Maxtor’s access time when connected via FireWire is considerably better and is then much closer to the results of the Seagate. The interface controller of the Maxtor drive may be the reason for such a misbalance.
As always, FC-Test is the last of our tests. Being indicative of the real-life performance of hard disk drives, this benchmarking tool measures the time it takes to create (i.e. to write), to read and to copy a few sets of files that differ in the size and number of files included. Knowing this time we can calculate the real speed of the drive.
The Windows and Programs patterns consist of many small files, while the other three patterns include several large files. Two 32GB partitions are created on the drives for the copy operations and the file patterns are first copied within the same partition (Copy Near) and then from one partition to another (Copy Far).
The NTFS results are published first.
The file creation diagram is a picture of a complete victory of the external drive from Maxtor. It is much better than its opponents working via the same interface and it has the highest absolute speeds, too. We can again observe the higher efficiency of the FireWire interface here, especially with the Maxtor drive. These results agree with the data we got when measured the linear read speed with IOMeter.
This shows how fast the drives can read the different sets of files. The Maxtor enjoys a big advantage, again. It is far ahead of the Seagate when using the FireWire interface. The latter only gets closer in the ISO pattern which includes a few large-size files. The results of the linear read speed test in IOMeter may give us an explanation: the drives differed there the least when the data chunk size was the biggest. The same is true for the USB 2.0 interface: the Maxtor wins again and its speed in some cases is higher or comparable to the performance of the FireWire-connected Seagate.
Copying files within one partition confirms the superiority of the Maxtor. It is the best irrespective of the interface. Moreover, it is faster than the Seagate when is attached via USB 2.0 while the latter is connected via the more efficient FireWire interface.
The Maxtor OneTouch III is also better than the Seagate at copying files from one partition to another. It again wins with all the five patterns and is again faster with USB 2.0 than the Seagate with FireWire.
Let’s see if our using the NTFS file system will have any effect on the performance of the drives.
The file creation (writing) speed of the Seagate depends but little on the employed interface, although FireWire still allows achieving a higher performance. The Maxtor is everywhere faster than its opponent, in every pattern and with any interface. The Maxtor is even ahead of the Seagate when they are connected via USB 2.0 and FireWire, respectively.
The Maxtor is faster than the Seagate drive at reading the file-sets, too, when they use the same interface. This time, however, the FireWire-connected Seagate is a little faster than the USB-connected Maxtor.
The Maxtor OneTouch III is the better of the two drives at copying files within the same partition. Even connected via the less efficient USB 2.0 interface, it is faster than the FireWire-attached Seagate.
The last diagram shows the speed of copying from one partition to another. There’s nothing particularly new here – the Maxtor wins every subtest and the FireWire interface proves its higher efficiency once again.
The Maxtor OneTouch III has been superior over the Seagate Pushbutton Backup External Hard Drive in this test session. Of course, we should make allowances for the different storage capacity of the tested devices since Seagate’s announced 500GB external drive in this series was not available at the time of our writing this review. Anyway, the victory of the Maxtor looks well deserved. This drive has higher read/write speeds in low-level IOMeter tests as indicated by the results of the drives when they are attached via the FireWire interface which limits their performance less than USB 2.0 does. Judging by the IOMeter results, we should have expected the drives to have similar speeds when working via USB 2.0, but it is not so in practice. The Maxtor OneTouch III delivers a much higher performance in WinBench 99 and FC-Test with both FireWire and USB 2.0 interfaces. Moreover, the Maxtor is sometimes faster than the Seagate when they are connected via USB 2.0 and FireWire, respectively. This can be explained by the difference in the cache memory amount (the Maxtor’s 16MB buffer against the Seagate’s 8MB) as well as by more efficient firmware algorithms. Besides that, the interface controllers may also affect the overall performance of the drives. The controllers will probably be unified in the future when the two companies merge into one, but this effect is quite possible with the current models.
And a few words about the interfaces. Like in many other of our test sessions, FireWire has been superior over USB 2.0, meaning that the drives deliver a higher performance when attached to a FireWire controller. Although the theoretical peak bandwidth of FireWire is lower than that of USB 2.0, it is more efficient in practice and you should definitely prefer it wherever possible.
It’s going to be interesting to watch the changes in Seagate’s external HDD manufacturing policy in the future, but so far the Maxtor OneTouch III seems to be the better buy between the two top models. It is also the optimal choice if you need the maximum storage capacity you can get. The speed factor becomes the more important when there are large amounts of data to be written to or read from the drive, minimizing your waiting time. From this point of view, the FireWire 800 (IEEE 1394b) interface should be most appropriate, too. Such drives are already available in Maxtor’s product line-up and we will test them on our site soon. We will also probably see this interface in new large-capacity external drives from the joined Seagate-Maxtor company.