Performance in FC-Test

Now we will check performance of the hard disk drives with the FC-Test program. Two 32GB partitions are created on the drives and formatted in NTFS and then in FAT32. After that a file-set is created of the hard disk. It is then read from the disk, copied within the same partition and then copied into another partition. The time taken to perform these operations is measured and the speed of the drive is calculated.

To remind you, the Windows and Programs file-sets consist of a large number of small files whereas the other three patterns (ISO, MP3, and Install) include a few large files each.

This test produces too much data, so I will only discuss the results of the MP3, ISO and Install patterns which illustrate the most characteristic use of external HDDs. You can find the diagrams for the remaining two patterns by following the links below.

FAT32 File System

FAT32 results come first.

Results in the Windows and Programs patterns are available here.

The Teac HD-15 PUS with the eSATA interface is in the lead again. It is followed by the FireWire-interfaced ZIV Pro. The losers are also obvious: these are the Seagate and the Maxtor OneTouch III. I cannot single out any drive among the others because some of them cope better with large files while the others, with small files.

Results in the Windows and Programs patterns are available here.

We’ve got the same leaders again: the Teac HD-15 PUS with the eSATA interface and the ZIV Pro with FireWire. The latter is faster than any USB-interfaced drive irrespective of the file-set. As for the losers, the Seagate and the Maxtor OneTouch III are again the slowest with small files. The Teac HD-15 PUS with the USB interface and the drives from Toshiba and Fujitsu have the worst results with large files. The Teac HD-15 PUK-B and the USB-interfaced ZIV Pro are the leaders among the HDDs with a USB interface at processing every file-set.

Results in the Windows and Programs patterns are available here.

When copying within the same partition, the results depend on the specific file-set. Well, the eSATA and FireWire interfaces are still in the lead, but the Teac HD-15 PUK-B is close behind them in the Install pattern, and the USB-interfaced ZIV Pro isn’t much slower, either. The Toshiba, Transcend and the USB-interfaced Teac HD-15 PUS are on the losing side, again.

Results in the Windows and Programs patterns are available here.

When copying from one partition into another, the Teac HD-15 PUK-B delivers excellent performance, being in the top three and even matching the eSATA-interfaced model. When connected via USB, the Teac HD-15 PUS is one of the slowest drives, probably due to low performance of its SATA-USB controller. The HDDs from Transcend and Toshiba are slow, too.