Our Test Methodologies: Under each test condition, the drives tested here were installed as secondary volumes in our testbed, with a different hard disk used for the OS and benchmark installations. The drives were left blank without partitions wherever possible, unless a test required them to be partitioned and formatted, as was the case with our ATTO and Vantage benchmark tests. Windows firewall, automatic updates and screen savers were all disabled before testing. In all test runs, we rebooted the system and waited several minutes for drive activity to settle before invoking a test.
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| HotHardware |
| Intel Core i5 Powered |
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Processor -
Motherboard -
Video Card -
Memory -
Hard Drives - |
Hardware Used:
Intel Core i5 2500K
ASUS P8P67 WS Revolution
Asus DirectCU II GTX 580
4GB Kingston DDR3-1866
WD Caviar Green 3TB
Crucial M225 128GB (OS drive) |
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OS -
Chipset Drivers -
Video Drivers - |
Relevant Software:
Windows 7 64-bit
Intel 9.2.0.1015
NVIDIA ForceWare v275.33
Benchmarks Used:
ATTO
SiSoftware SANDRA 2011
CrystalDiskMark
HDTune
PCMark 7
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| ATTO Disk Benchmark - Read/Write Performance |
| Version 2.47 |
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ATTO is a disk benchmark that measures transfers across a specific volume length. It measures raw transfer rates for both reads and writes and graphs them out in an easily interpreted chart. We chose .5kb through 8192kb transfer sizes over a total max volume length of 256MB. This test was performed on blank, formatted drives with NTFS partitions.
The Seagate Barracuda 3TB posted uneven scores in this test. In the read test, it whipped the competition with 184.3MB/s; the next-best score was the Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB’s 160.4MB/s. However, in the write test, our Barracuda 3TB delivered a more middling result. Although it technically had the second-best score, the Barracuda 3TB barely edged out the Hitachi drive (146.4MB/s vs. 144.5MB/s) and was relatively far away from the Barracuda XT 3TB’s 157.2MB/s.
