1TB Hard Drive Roundup

Reviews: Storage

1TB Hard Drive Roundup - Update

Author:
Editor:
Sponsor:
Published:

Richard Poelling
Brian

Dec. 4, 2008

Article

Specifications

Images

User Reviews (0)

Comments (0)

<< Previous

Next >>

DiskBench

This benchmark is closer to the "real world" experience one might see with a drive. The software performs various functions common to most users and times them. These include creating, reading, and copying files.

Batch File Creation

For this test a series of files are created in ever-increasing sizes. I started with a 480 MB file and topped out at a 1.6 GB file. The file sizes were in increments of 40MB.

Interestingly, the Hitachi drive is coming out ahead of both Seagate drives in the larger file sizes. UPDATE: It isn’t surprising that the WD Black pretty much trounces all of the other units. What is interesting is that the WD Green performed better than any of the previously tested drives. If the WD Green is able to keep pace while delivering cooler and quieter running, then I see a nice future ahead for this drive.

This is the same graph, except zoomed in to the region from 0.5 to 1 GB.

Single File Read

For this test I used the NFS Carbon DVD ISO I just created. This test is reading a single file from the disk.

For the single file read test, both of the Seagate drives bested the Hitachi by approximately 15 secs. UPDATE: Again, the WD drives are flanking both sides of the performance band.

Dual File Read

Two separate files were read off of each drive simultaneously. The first was the Windows Server 2003 Enterprise ISO. This file is 569,366,528 bytes in size. The second one was the NFS carbon DVD ISO I previously used. Again, its size is 4,253,657,088 bytes.

Ok, it's official, the Hitachi drive is stinking up the place! The graph says it all. UPDATE: Interestingly, both of the WD drives did very poor on this particular test. Several retests confirmed that these numbers are being report similarly. Although, overall performance does not come from the results of a single test!

Dual File Creation Two files are created simultaneously in this test. Each file is 503,316,480 bytes in size.

Again, the Hitachi drive seems to be doing a good job at lagging. Although the result of this test is far closer than the last, the Hitachi drive is still about 1.5 seconds slower. UPDATE: Even the WD Green beat out the Hitachi! The WD Black isn’t even playing fair.

File Copy

The last test was a single file copy from the disk to a folder on the same disk. Again, for this I chose to use my NFS DVD ISO.

Redemption! It looks like we finally found something that the Hitachi drive is good at. The Hitachi drive completed the copy almost 30 seconds faster than either of the Seagate drives. UPDATE: The WD Green is close on the heels of the Hitachi. Do I even have to mention that the WD Black beat everyone else?

IOmeter

For this test, I used the same read/write specification used to previously test NAS devices. This is a 2 min test that first uses a 256K write of a 1 GB file, followed by a 2 min 256K read of the same 1GB file. Each test was performed 3 times and averaged.

<< Previous

Page 3 of 4

Next >>

Page 1: Introduction & Testing Procedure
Page 2: Benchmarking: HD Tach
Page 3: Benchmarking: DiskBench & IOmeter
Page 4: Quality & Conclusion

Subscribe to Internal Hard Drives [more info]

View All

Internal Hard Drives June 10, 2008

1TB Hard Drive Roundup

Internal Hard Drives March 27, 2008

Seagate Barracuda 750 GB SATA II Hard Drive (7200.10)

Internal Hard Drives May 20, 2007

500GB Hard Drive Round-Up

Internal Hard Drives September 26, 2006

Add Comment

0 User Comments

Add Comment

To add a comment without being a member, you may omit the password field, but you must enter your name (or nickname) along with your comment. * Denotes required fields.