Western Digital and Seagate: 320GB Grudge Match

IPEAK File Transfer Tests

Our IPEAK based File Transfer benchmarks indicate how well a drive performs in a strictly read or write operation with a limited number of files (29) but a large amount of data (7.55GB). The test is designed to ensure continual write or read operations across a large section of the drive and requires constant head and actuator movements along with caching large amounts of data.



The read performance of the WD3200KS is very impressive in these benchmarks while the write performance is average compared to the group. The Seagate 7200.10 320GB read performance is dismal compared to the other drives while its write performance was above average. This is interesting as its read performance in the anti-virus test was excellent. After further examination of the trace files we noticed the read requests in the anti-virus test consisted of mostly small block sizes in continual patterns compared to very large block sizes in irregular patterns in the file transfer test that hampered its performance. We are still looking into this as it seems to be an overall issue with the Seagate drives in general that indicates a poorly tuned firmware or cache design.

IPEAK Video/Audio Tests

The IPEAK based Video/Audio benchmarks are designed around simulating media encoding and HTPC activities. These are basic benchmarks at this time as this section will be expanded greatly with some new tools that we have developed that will be introduced in our 500GB roundup. Our change to a dual core processor will assist us in maintaining a balance between the CPU and Storage systems during the trace file creation and benchmarking processes. These benchmarks are CPU intensive in nature but also require a balanced storage system with the ability to handle read and write requests simultaneously in a very efficient manner.





The AnyDVD benchmark is heavily weighted to write requests with the results showing a common pattern with the WD Raptor finishing first and the Seagate 7200.10 320GB placing about 9% ahead of the WD3200KS. The Seagate 7200.10 750GB posts excellent scores in this area and should since its platter density lends itself well to this process.

The NeroRecode 2 benchmark is weighted to streaming read requests but is balanced by continuous write operations. This benchmark is one of the most demanding ones in our test suite with the disk being active the entire trace file with several 100% utilization peaks. The Seagate 7200.10 320GB posts the best scores here with a victory over the Raptor and finishing ahead of the 750GB drive. The WD3200KS finishes near the bottom but does not offer the same strong read performance we noticed in the file transfer tests where a limited number of like file sizes are utilized.

Our video and audio encoding benchmarks that stream a continuous data feed clearly favor the high and sustainable transfer rates of the Raptor. We recently updated this benchmark so previous results cannot be compared. The Seagate 7200.10 320GB is about 10% quicker than the WD3200KS in the video streaming benchmark and about 8% in the more demanding audio encoding process. These results continue the pattern where sequential requests favor the Seagate drive and random (chaotic) requests favor the WD drive.