Performance in FC-Test

We developed this test to measure the speed of processing several file-sets in two file systems. Five file-sets, representing the folder structure of a real computer, are first created on the disk, then read from the disk into system memory, and finally copied into the same partition and then into another disk partition.

To avoid overloading the article with diagrams we present the FC-Test results as tables and as summary diagrams in which the rating of each HDD is calculated as the average of its performance with each file-set in percentage from the best result.

When creating files we have three groups of results that are determined by the linear speed of each HDD. As one could expect, the Deskstar 7K1000 is on top in each file system, although closely followed by the T7K500. Their speeds are almost 50% higher than those of the oldest HDDs in this review, the Deskstar 7K250 and 7K400.

The 32MB cache buffer doesn’t affect the HDD’s performance much whereas there is a significant difference between 8MB and 16MB of memory thanks to which the 7K500 with a Serial ATA interface is ahead of the T7K250.

As we have supposed in the IOMeter section, the Deskstar T7K250 and the newer models have all become faster in NTFS due to the speed improvements in processing small-size data blocks.

The size of the cache buffer has no effect on the HDD’s performance at reading files. The read speed is determined by the speed of reading from the platters and, partially, by the microprocessor in the HDD electronics.

The Deskstar 7K1000 is ahead of its predecessors by the value of the difference in their specified data-transfer rates. The Deskstar T7K250 with a Parallel ATA interface stands out in its group due to the slightly higher areal density it has due to adaptive formatting.