Round-Up: Comparison Testing of 22 Hard Disk Drives : Let The Games Begin!

07:00 - Tuesday 27 September 2005 by Patrick Schmid
Source: Tom's Hardware – Keywords: round

Table of content:
1 – Let The Games Begin!
  1. 1 – Let The Games Begin!
  2. 2 – The View From The Top
  3. 3 – A Stagnant Market?
  4. 4 – Buying Advice
  5. 5 – Serial ATA Drives
  6. 6 – Hitachi DeskStar 7K250: Former Champ
  7. 7 – Hitachi DeskStar T7K250: 250 GB Champion
  8. 8 – Hitachi DeskStar 7K500: Capacity Monster
  9. 9 – Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 80 GB (6Y080M0)
  10. 10 – DiamondMax Plus 9 250 GB (6Y250M0): Robust But Quiet
  11. 11 – DiamondMax Plus 10 300 GB (6B300S0): Solid Performer
  12. 12 – Seagate Barracuda ATA 7200.7 160 GV SATA NCQ (ST3120827AS)
  13. 13 – Seagate Barracuda ATA 7200.8: Two Faces To Show
  14. 14 – Western Digital WD360 Raptor: The Pioneer
  15. 15 – Western Digital WD740 Raptor: Fastest Of All SATA Drives
  16. 16 – Western Digital WD2500JD: The Old Guard
  17. 17 – Western Digital WD2500KS: SATA II Model
  18. 18 – Western Digital WD3200JD
  19. 19 – UltraATA Hard Drives
  20. 20 – Hitachi DeskStar 7K250
  21. 21 – Hitachi DeskStar T7K250: This Model T Takes The Prize
  22. 22 – Seagate Barracuda ATA 7200.7 120 GB: The Classic Model
  23. 23 – Seagate Barracuda ATA 7200.8: The Upgrade Drive
  24. 24 – Western Digital WD1000BB: First 100 GB Drive
  25. 25 – Western Digital WD2000JB
  26. 26 – Western Digital WD3200JB: Price/performance Leader
  27. 27 – Test Setup
  28. 28 – Data Transfer Diagrams, Continued
  29. 29 – Data Transfer Diagrams, Continued
  30. 30 – Data Transfer Diagrams, Continued
  31. 31 – Data Transfer Diagrams, Continued
  32. 32 – Data Transfer Diagrams, Continued
  33. 33 – I/O Performance
  34. 34 – Performance Measurements
  35. 35 – Performance Measurements, Continued
  36. 36 – PCMark HD Benchmarks
  37. 37 – Summary And Conclusions: Current Drives Are Fast Drives

Let The Games Begin!

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The jockeying for position among hard drive makers never seems to end, particularly in the areas of drive capacity and speed. As a result, hard disks have nearly doubled their capabilities over the last few years, in contrast to the performance of CPUs and systems as a whole. But that's no mere anomaly; we expect further improvements and enhancements in the immediate future.

This market is dominated by a handful of vendors that together offer the majority of 3.5" drives for desktop computers: Hitachi, Maxtor, Samsung, Seagate and Western Digital. Vendors such as ExcelStor also play a supporting role in this market, but their products are based on technology that originates with Hitachi.

Maxtor, Seagate and WD also offer external disk drives, ready to hook up to PCs using USB or Firewire ports. This is a logical strategy; the market for conventional 3.5" drives isn't growing as vigorously as it once did, which makes cultivation of additional market niches essential. These offerings not only provide external storage options for backup and flexible data repositories, but also come in smaller form factors too, from 2.5" down to 1". This review does not cover these more petite offerings, however.

When it comes to buying a hard disk, users tend to weigh three factors most heavily: the tradeoff between cost and capacity; performance capability and built-in features and functions; and the vendor's reputation. Other important factors include noise output and heat dissipation, both of which have been the subject of serious improvements in recent years. In general, all drives are pretty quiet these days; other than a quiet hum or whirr from the spindle, only drive head movements contribute to noise output.

Hard disk tests are nothing new for THG, but what's been missing until now has been a general round-up of the models available in today's market. That's why in this test we looked at not only a sizable number of actual drives, we also made sure we covered a good representative selection of makes and models. This will help make a performance comparison across this rather considerable board of candidates as meaningful as possible. All drives had to survive our new test battery, which consists of multiple types of benchmarks and tests.


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