Real World Tests – File System Performance

For our Real World File System Performance tests, we have taken the original tests and tailored them for external drives. More specifically, instead of just measuring the time that it takes to copy, zip, and unzip within the same drive, we measure the time that it takes to perform these tasks from a SATA drive to the external device.

File Copy Operations

File Copy – One 300MB File, seconds, lower is better
Within Drive To Drive (From SATA)
AcomData E5 320GB (USB) 32.072 11.191
AcomData E5 320GB (FireWire 400) 20.573 11.334
Seagate 120GB USB 28.539 11.750

File Copy – Three Hundred 1MB Files, seconds, lower is better
Within Drive To Drive (From SATA)
AcomData E5 320GB (USB) 13.298 13.219
AcomData E5 320GB (FireWire 400) 12.962 12.813
Seagate 120GB USB 13.516 13.711

Interestingly, the Seagate drive operates slightly quicker than the E5 on its USB interface while copying a file within the drive itself. We performed about 15 runs of this test to verify the results as well.

HDTach 3 Real World Tests – File System Performance (cont’d)
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  • foot167 - Thursday, September 29, 2005 - link

    I just returned the 300GB model today after 3 weeks of use. Everything I read about them said they were terrible but I had to give them a shot anyway. Sometimes my computer wouldn't recognize the drive. it would say no drive there. then on monday the drive decided that it was unformatted and needed to be reformatted. good thing that i kept a copy of everything i put on the external on my internal drives.

    the 300gb one can be had for under $200 and even less after rebates.

    How about some reliability tests on these drives. Does the firewire/usb interface affect the reliability of these drives? Are they prone to crashing for some reason?
  • ScottyDog - Friday, September 30, 2005 - link

    I agree with your comments about reliability with these external drives. I have one and have the same problems with the disk suddenly becoming "unformatted". I have done a google search and this is a huge problem with these external USB or Firewire chipsets whether they are are the Oxford or Prolific flavors.

    Somebody really needs to do an article about what is going on here as I have resorted to leaving my drive off unless I am doing a backup and then need to restore otherwise all my data gets destroyed.

    I originally thought it might be due to write caching and changing it to safe mode but it makes no difference with mine. If I leave it on eventually it becomes "Unformatted".

    type this into google and you will see this is a wide spread problem with these external drives: windows delayed write failure
  • Googer - Thursday, September 29, 2005 - link

    Dosen't it have 1394? I won't buy an External HDD with out 1394a and/or 1394b.
  • MASCARNHAS - Monday, June 21, 2010 - link

    I've used Report and although its great, I've had better luck with WheresTheFreeSpace. It is Modeled after a PC application that is very popular called <a href="http://www.wheresthefreespace.com">Treesiz... (but its for Mac).</a>

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