ISO Pattern

The next pattern is indicative of the maximum speed achievable with each HDD since it contains only three files totaling 1.6GB.

As we already know, Maxtor’s HDDs feel at their ease under sequential loads, and the top of the list is occupied by them. The Samsung SP2514N doesn’t give up, though, winning third place. The old DiamondMax Plus 9 delivers excellent performance, proving again that the areal density and the buffer size are not so crucial for real-life work. The best of the Seagate drives is only 13th. The Hitachi drives proved to be the worst ones in this test.

When reading such large files, almost all of the HDDs, excepting the Seagate ST3250823A, reach their maximum speed. Let’s see what we have when copying within the same partition.

There are not one but two winners here. The Seagate ST3250624AS and the Maxtor 7L250S0 have absolutely identical results, outperforming the potentially faster Maxtor DiamondMax 10 and MaXLine III of the third revision. Having the highest areal density, the Samsung SP2514N comes to the finish only after the WD2500KS that is equipped with 84GB platters. The Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 and all the Hitachi T7K250 drives are on the losing side. The Seagate ST3250824A is against the slowest at copying.

The Seagate ST3250624AS is less agile at copying large files from one partition to another and it lost a few places. The Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 looks good as they compete with models that surpass them in terms of areal density as well as memory amount. The two HDDs from Samsung just fail this rather simple test.