A spectacularly huge capacity is one thing, but for some of us the purchasing decision also comes down to performance. That's why we tested out of the trio of drives to see which of them--or, in this case, which one of them--would blast out the most impressive numbers.
We pitted the single Seagate and the two WD drives against PCMark Vantage, SISoft SANDRA's Physical Disk Test Suite, the aging but still worthy HD Tach, and we also timed the loading of three games on a fresh, Windows Vista 64-bit installation. Each test was performed on each hard drive in the exact same fashion. We rebooted the PC in between each test.
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Futuremark PCMark Vantage |
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Simulated Application Performance | |
This benchmark features real-world computations going on behind the surface. The hard drive specific test wings eight Windows Vista oriented activities at the fixed disc storage system, times each one of them, and then calculates a number based on performance. We present below the individual timings plus the PCMark HDD scores. Note--timings are in seconds and smaller lines are better on this logarithmic graph. The PCMark score is in PC Marks and longer lines are better.
And the WD Caviar Black outpaces Seagate's offering while the RE4 blasts out of the pack and takes the early lead. WD's drives are doing well so far, as the Seagate and the WD Caviar Black come in at more or less of a tie for second.
