Western Digital SE16 750GB: "Quiet" a Performer

iPEAK Video/Audio Tests

The iPEAK based Video/Audio benchmarks are designed around simulating media encoding and HTPC activities. These benchmarks are CPU intensive in nature but also require a balanced storage system with the ability to handle read and write requests simultaneously in a very efficient manner. Using iPEAK also effectively removes the CPU from the equation, allowing us to focus on the hard drives.



The AnyDVD benchmark is heavily weighted to sequential write requests with the PMR based drives generally finishing ahead of the other 7200RPM drives. The Western Digital drive beats the Seagate 7200.10 in this benchmark by nearly 4%, and even comes close to the vaunted Raptor. All non-PMR drives in the benchmark fall further behind the WD7500AAKS, generally moving well into the double-digit percentage differences. (Higher data density means faster transfer rates, which is part of the reason the PMR drives do so well.)

The Nero Recode 2 benchmark is weighted to streaming read requests but is balanced by continuous write operations near the end of the test. In this assessment, the Seagate 7200.10 edges out the WD7500AAKS slightly, which in turn comes in slightly ahead of the WD Raptor. Other non-PMR disks fall far behind in this benchmark. Realistically, the three drives at the top of this chart can be considered equal in this kind of task given the modest numerical difference in scores between each drive.

iPEAK Game Installation Tests

Our iPEAK based Game Installation benchmarks simply show the ability of the hard drive to write data as quickly as possible to the disc based upon the installation software instructions. As detailed in our iPEAK setup description we installed the games from our source drive in order to eliminate the optical drive bottleneck. In separate application timing we witnessed basically the same percentage spread when installing the games via our DVD drive so these results are representative of actual installation performance.



The Raptors, as expected, dominates our gaming tests due to their rotational and random access speed advantages. The WD7500AAKS turns in third-place finishes in both of these tests, behind the speedy Hitachi 7K1000 drive and lightning fast Raptors. Of note, the difference in performance between Western Digital's 750GB offering and Seagate's 7200.10 750GB drive is roughly 15% in each case.

iPEAK Game Play Tests

The iPEAK based Game Play tests are centered on the benefits of having a hard disk that can load non-linear or sequential data files quickly without interrupting the flow of the game.



In a virtual copy of the results from the iPEAK Game Installation tests, the Western Digital WD7500AAKS comes in third, behind the Raptor and the Hitachi 7K1000. The difference between the Western Digital drive and the Seagate 750GB drive has become a chasm, benchmarking at a roughly 35% differential.

We need to remember our iPEAK tests reflect pure hard drive performance and will be mitigated by the system platform components as we will see in our application tests.