Performance in WinBench 99

First, you can have a look at the data-transfer diagrams of the drives:

We will compare the drives according to the read speed at the beginning and end of the disk:

The 250GB Teac is as fast as the 300GB models, so it is indeed based on a 4200rpm Fujitsu MHX2BT disk.

Note that the USB limits the speed of the 5400rpm HDDs both at the beginning and end of the partition where the speed is the highest and lowest, respectively. So, the interface is the main performance-affecting factor of mobile HDDs. 4200rpm HDDs with eSATA interface are considerably faster than 5400rpm HDDs with USB interface.

Now let’s compare the results of the WinBench 99 tests performed on a 32GB partition.

Detailed FAT32 results

The results are most illustrative: the USB-connected models have similar results, the 250GB HDDs being barely faster than the 300GB ones notwithstanding the higher spindle rotation speed. The Teac drives with eSATA interface and slow disks inside are considerably faster, especially in terms of Business Disk WinMark 99.

Detailed NTFS results

When the partition is formatted in NTFS, the USB interface is somewhat closer to eSATA in High-End Disk WinMark 99 but still slower than it in the Business subtest.