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External Hard Disk Drives Roundup: 160GB Storage Capacity

Date: 2008-2-28

[Abstract]
   Mobile storage devices are still in our focus and this review is about 160GB models based on 2.5” hard disk drives. It is not a record-breaking capacity as there are 250GB (for de...

[Content] PCDigitalMobileGame


Testbed and Methods

The following testing utilities were used:

  • IOMeter 2003.02.15
  • WinBench 99 2.0
  • FC-Test 1.0

Testbed configuration:

  • Albatron PX865PE Pro II mainboard
  • Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz CPU
  • IBM DTLA-307015 system disk, 15GB
  • Radeon 7000 32MB graphics card
  • 256MB DDR2-533 SDRAM
  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2

I installed the generic OS drivers for the drives and formatted them in FAT32 and NTFS as one partition with the default cluster size. For some tests 32GB partitions were created on the drives and formatted in FAT32 and NTFS with the default cluster size, too. The eSATA interface was provided by a Promise SATA300 TX4302 controller.

Performance in Intel IOMeter

Sequential Read & Write Patterns

IOMeter is sending a stream of read and write requests with a request queue depth of 4. The size of the requested data block is changed each minute, so that we could see the dependence of the drive’s sequential read/write speed on the size of the data block. This test is indicative of the highest speed the drive can achieve.

External Hard Disk Drives Roundup: 160GB Storage Capacity

External Hard Disk Drives Roundup: 160GB Storage Capacity

There are too many data, so I built two diagrams sorted according to the maximum speed. The result of the Teac HD-15 PUS connected via eSATA is impressive, of course. It is far above the others having the highest maximum speed (over 40MB/s) and achieving that speed on very small data blocks. The drives with a USB interface (including the same HD-15 PUS but connected via USB) have similar results achieving their maximum speed on 64KB data blocks but the eSATA interface provides such speed as soon as 2KB blocks. That’s an excellent result indeed. The ZIV Pro performs well with its FireWire interface, yet the difference between the two interfaces of this drive is small. So, the best interface is obvious here even though the HDD employed may have affected performance.

As for the USB-interfaced drives, the Teac HD-15 PUK-B is the best one among them, its speed being considerably higher than 30MB/s. The Toshiba PX1270E-1G16 and the Teac HD-15 PUS (connected via USB) are the slowest in this test.

External Hard Disk Drives Roundup: 160GB Storage Capacity

External Hard Disk Drives Roundup: 160GB Storage Capacity

The eSATA interface enjoys an even bigger lead when writing: over 10MB/s on large data blocks and 20MB/s and more on 2-16KB data blocks. The FireWire interface, on the contrary, loses its ground, its max speed being but slightly higher than the results of the best USB-interfaced products such as the Transcend TS160GSJ25B, Toshiba PX1270E-1G16 and Teac HD-15 PUK-B. This small difference can be observed on large data blocks only, though. The FireWire-connected ZIV Pro is still far faster on medium data blocks.

The other drives have similar speeds except for the Fujitsu HandyDrive whose graph shows sudden slowdowns. Its controller has problems with data blocks of certain sizes.




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