Ultra ATA 66 Hard Drive Roundup - March 2000

Things get a bit more interesting here. Using ZD Winbench 99’s Disk Transfer test to measure raw sequential disk transfer rates, the Seagate Barracuda leaves the rest of the field in its dust. You can see that even on the slower inner tracks the Seagate’s performance stays at or above 18.5 MB/sec, while the faster outer tracks reading shows a blazing 28.1 MB/sec. This equates into the actual sustained media transfer rates and you can see where the Seagate Barracuda would be starting to approach the 33 MB/sec maximum transfer rate of the Ultra ATA 33 drive, leaving little room to spare. This illustrates one of the main needs to the move toward the 66 MB/sec speeds of the Ultra ATA 66 standard. While it is useful in burst transfers right now, it leaves plenty of room for growth as the current technology shows that the Ultra ATA 33 spec will very soon become inadequate.

Once again the other 7200-RPM units fill in the middle with the 5400-RPM units pulling up the rear. The IBM 34 GXP and WD Expert continue to post similar results, with the WD slightly pulling out front this time around. It is interesting to note here; that both the 5400-RPM drives outer track transfer rates were very near the Seagate Barracuda’s slowest rate, with the IBM Deskstar 25 GP actually slower. This just further illustrates the importance a higher rotational speed has on a drives performance.