Any 320GB 7200rpm owners willing to run PC Mark?

I'd like to see some benchmarks on the 320GB 7200rpm drives from Hitachi, Seagate and Western Digital. Synthetic benchmarks (HD Tune and XBench) have already been posted here: Link. Since synthetic benchmarks don't give the whole picture, I'd like to see the PC Mark HDD tests on these drives.

PC Mark is free and can be downloaded here: Link.
(For Vista there is PC Mark Vantage)

If anyone with a 320GB 7200 rpm drive is willing to do this, please do so.

The Hitachi 7K200 scores 8,3 Mb/sec in the PCMark Windows XP startup test. So it will be easy to compare these results.

HD Tune results for these drives in the attachments:

 

Im guessing Hitachi will be fastest, Seagate Second, WD Third.

 

Here's how the older drives score:


Tomshardware link

 

Note that the WD drive there is slightly newer than the other two drives but is only 5400RPM, while the Hitachi and Seagate are 7200RPM.

 

Correct me if i'm wrong but isn't the WD Scorpio Black Model: WD3200BEKT a 7200 rpm drive as well??
So the drives Phil is talking about are all similar specs, it should make for a great head to head, wish it would happen soon tho', need a HDD now.................

 

Yep BEKT is 7200rpm, but in the table it's BEVT (5400 rpm).

 

BEKT does not have Free Fall Sensor whereas BEVT does.

 

BEKT is 7200rpm w/o freefall sensor. BJKT is 7200 rpm with freefall sensor.

 

I'm not sure about the benchmark results for the 200gb 7200rpm drives but I wonder if they tested them under the same circumstances in terms of the performance/noise settings being the same. I had a 7k200 and it shipped stock as being on the performance/disabled setting for noise suppression. I just got a Seagate 7200.3 320gb drive and it had noise suppression enabled by default at medium value, so I disabled it to enable max performance (with highest noise). The settings these drives ship with would make an impact in performance benchmarks unless they were checked/held constant before benchmarking. Subjectively, my new 7200.3 320gb drive is much quieter than my 7k200 even on bypass mode/max performance, while being just slightly faster. Sorry, no benchmarks/numbers available to compare.

 

CHANNELV how do you turn off noise suppression?

 

YEAH! that's what I want to know too.

 

i had to do this with my wd6400aaks. Forgive me if i'm wrong (then my post is a waste of time). Download hdtune pro. Go to the AAM tab, and set the value to 254 (high performance). My access time decreased from 16 to 12ms doing this. Again if this is totally irrelavent forgive me.

 

Excuse me for being totally naive, but what exactly is noise suppression?

 

I tried it on my Samsung HM160HC, but it did not work. I got equal results at both stetings.

I wonder if other people get better results. HD Tune Pro (14day trial) can be downloaded here.

 

I'd still like to find someone who can run PC Mark on his 320GB 7200rpm. As a reward I offer rep +1

In the mean time I'm looking for more benchmarks, I found one:
Vista Experience Index is 5.7 for the WD 320GB 7200rpm ( link) and several people say it runs very cool.

 

I would run PCmark seeing as I also have a WD 7200rpm 320gb scorpio...
But I have two and they're in RAID 0 right now, so my results won't be representative of a single drive.

 

My WEI index for my Seagate 7200.3 320gb 7200rpm 16mb that I just installed 2 days ago (I haven't updated my sig yet) is 5.9. I had a 7k200, but for the life of me I cannot remember what the WEI index for that drive was. I do know for sure it wasn't as high as this one though - I thought I remember it being 5.4 or 5.7...sorry I cannot remember. (Sorry Phil, after doing a clean install of Vista x64 SP1 integrated and only just what I need, I'm a bit hesitant to install extra programs on this machine right now like PC Mark...apologies!!)

 

That's a very good score for a single drive. I bet it's the highest sofar. Unfortunately the WEI index is only focussed on transfer rates and not access times, as far as I know.

Yeah I understand. By the way, I work with Acronis True Images so I can set an image back of a clean install in 5 minutes.

 

Phil, yeah I was very surprised at the WEI score jumping up to 5.9 too. The only weak link on my laptop is the crap GPU. I did FINALLY remove the Turbo memory module the other week though...that thing was just causing trouble/crashes than anything else.

I may just have to look into that Acronis software you mentioned, as I do reformat/reimage OS's WAY more than the average user or even NBR user for that matter!

 

I'm thinking its going to be Seagate, then WD, then Hitachi last.

Hitachi has the lowest STR, and next to slowest access times.
Seagate has slowest access times but a good leap ahead of the other two with STR (89.7MB/s!).
WD: has a bit better STR on outer edge of platter than Hitachi, and a bit better access times than Hitachi and Seagate.

 

Well you could be right, but I'm thinking the access time of the Seagate with 17.0 ms is just not good enough to win it. So I'm expecting the WD to win it.

It will also depend on what benchmark we pick. I suggest XP/Vista startup performance measured with PC Mark05 or Vantage.

We're one step closer to finding it out because djcraig found the results for the WD. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=271955

 

Yes I agree with that somewhat. Its either Seagate or WD for sure! It depends on whether the Bench likes a good STR or a good random access speed.
I was talking about the XP startup speed (or any other benchmark that tests the amount of data that can be read/written to the HD during relatively random locations).
One things for sure, from the HDtune benchmarks you have shown us, Hitachi will be last no doubt.

Thanks for all the research!

 

My pleasure man.

There is however the possibility that the HD Tune results are not reliable. A background process might easily disturb the results. Or maybe the Hitachi had one of the first firmwares that was not totally optimized yet. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

 

I would definitely go with the WD at this point. It's price tag is just better than the other two and performance right now seems to be better. Not to mention that it's actually available right now for most retailers.

 

I've just ordered the WD Drive, and I'll run pcmark when I get it.

 

Sweet! Lookin forward to it!

 

PC Mark05 fails many tests on my system and does not give a result. Seems it needs some updates to run on current hardware/software. Maybe its vista64, or the raid5 ...

sorry cant help

 

PC Mark05 is XP only. Go for PC Mark Vantage. Free trial here.

We already have one set of results but it would be nice if we have more:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=271955

 

i think the slower 17ms came from processes running in the background, as it showed some accesses taking up to 50ms bringing the final score down.
And (as i allready posted in the other thread here @ nbf) in this second hdTune pic it was on the same level as the other drives regarding the access time, but again overtook once more in raw transfer rate:



So i was brave and ordered one of those 7200.3 it will reach me beginning of next week...let`s C

 

OK if this HDTune result is reliable then the Seagate 7200.3 looks like the winner.

But who knows, maybe the 7K320 HD Tune result was not realiable either.

I guess we'll have to wait for some other benchmarks.

 

While XP is technically the latest OS supported, I was able to use it fine using Vista 32. Maybe it's just the 64 bit that's messing up.

 

Man, if I would have known earlier about the 7200rpm drive, I would have gone for that drive instead of the BEVT.. If this is how it actually looks, it seems to be kinda cXc..

 

Some more for the Momentus 7200.3 from Japan:

http://speedo.ula.cc/test/r.so/pc11.2ch.net/hard/1212850746/781?guid=ON

 

Ok that confirms the 15.9ms access.

So going by the HD Tune results it seems like this:
1. Seagate 7200.3
2. WD 3200BEKT
3. Hitachi 7K320

HD tune does not give the whole picture though so we're still looking for people wanting to run PC Mark/Vantage especially on 7200.3 and 7K320.

 

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15079/4

Looks like the Scorpio Black Pwns the 7200.3 in almost every test, except for the Ipeak and HDTACH STR test.

Its strange how the SSDs didn't perform all that much better than the mechanical drives for Worldbench. I'll bet the Pentium 4 they are using is a bottleneck on some of the tests..

 

Great reviews. Thanks for posting. Yes i agree WD beats the 7200.3 in most of these test. This is why synthetic benchmark like HDTune are not that valuable.

Pentium 4 3.4Ghz at 800FSB, that's like a 1.4Ghz Intel Dual core. I don't think that should be a bottleneck but it is a weird choice though. Looking at their benchmark results, yeah it does seem like something may be off. I would have expected SSDs to be faster than they show.

Too bad they did not test the 7K320.

 

In HD Tune pro you said to "Go to the AAM tab, and set the value to 254 (high performance). " Does this increase the over preformance of the drive, does it work for any drive, or does this only affect the bench mark results?

Thanks,

 

Damn, I hope the Hitachi 7k320 wins, my laptop can only use Hitachi drives because of my mod. I spent some $450 to have the harddrive by hitachi logo printed on my palmrest in real gold leaf, so I just cant use anything else

Lets get some pcmark scores guys, I want to see how this fares over the other 7200rpm sata drives.

K-TRON

 

Well all we have sofar is synthetic benchmmarks of the 7K320. As Hitachi usually is a really good performer, it may suprise us in real life benchmarks.

It's been proven again that HD Tune is very limited as a benchmark. Going by HDTune it seemed that the Seagate 7200.3 was faster than the WD 3200BEKT. But in real life benchmarks the WD is faster in almost every area.

It's surprising that no one has really reviewed or benchmarked the 7k320.

If anyone has it, please run PCMark (Vantage) on it. PCMark is still a synthetic benchmarks but offers more information than HDTune.

 

Ok guys, I ran some benchmark with my Seagate 320Gb 7200.3, here is the result.




Will have Vantage up tomorrow.

 

Thanks Han. For the PC Mark benchmark I'd like to see the details for each individual HDD test. There's 5. In the free version you may only be able to see 2 results.

 

No problem Phil, I was having some issue downloading the vantage, will have it up tomorrow.
I'll run the Pcmark05 again too and take a screen shot with details

On the side note, in the free version you can't run HDD test

 

True, but in the free PC Mark test 2 HDD tests are run. And it's possible to see the details.

 

Alright Phil, here is the details.

The HDD score this time is 6130. I ran it in freshly installed XP with SP3 and visual effect set to best for performance.

 

9.7 mb/sec is an amazing score. It's way higher than the 7.8 mb/sec score Tom's hardware posted.

I wonder what is responsible for these differences.

 

I'm not sure, I first formatted my HDD to 5 partitions for 3 OSs. I ran HD tune and the result is a little less, so I deleted the Linux partitions and the scores improved a little bit. So I guess if it's all one partition the score would be better???

 

I'm thinking the size of partitions may also matters (smaller is faster) and fat32 or ntfs also matters.

And other performance settings may also matter. Even I/O controllers probably matter.

But no doubt those 7200.3 scores you posted are very impressive. Maybe the Techreport review (which turned out quite bad for 7200.3) was a review of an early version.

 

hm, that's interesting, cause the score is slightly lower in Vista, which in my case is 64 bit.
I had some problem with running system suit test though, it didn't give me the score . I don't know what to do.

So....with those scores, what is the ranking now?
I gotta get K-TRON in here....

 

PC Mark is made for XP, Vantage for Vista. So better go for Vantage.

Well the only benchmarks that were run with identical systems are on Tom's hardware (and Techreport).



I'm also trying to figure out how reliable I/O Meter 2003 is as a benchmark, but haven't found any answer yet.

 

Oh, and I thought user review version would be better ???