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    How to benchmark hard drives?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by brncao, Dec 10, 2009.

  1. brncao

    brncao Notebook Evangelist

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    I have a seagate 7200.12 1TB hard drive that I'm using as an external hard drive docked in a blacx esata/usb docking station. My esata expresscard finally came now I can transfer stuff via esata rather than USB. My 2 internal hdd is a Hitachi HTS722020K9SA00 and Seagate ST9160821AS.

    I also have another laptop (haven't opened it yet) that has an esata port so I'd like to test my external hdd on that as well. Any recommended software and/or methods?
     
    brncao, Dec 10, 2009
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  2. BrandonSi

    BrandonSi Notebook Savant

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    BrandonSi, Dec 10, 2009
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  3. User Retired 2

    User Retired 2 Notebook Nobel Laureate NBR Reviewer

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    CrystalDiskMark| hdtune| PerformanceTest| atto| IOMeter. See an example of comparison of results here.
     
    User Retired 2, Dec 10, 2009
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  4. brncao

    brncao Notebook Evangelist

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    Do you know any application that I can use to test the write speed without having to erase everything on my drive? I'm trying to test the writing speed between my external hdd and my internal drives. The transfer rate between Seagate ST9160821AS and my new ext. 7200.12 1TB drive is about 9.57mb/s to 18mb/s. That's kinda slow for a sata. I'm guessing the Seagate ST9160821AS is the bottleneck? I'm not sure.

    Edit: I transferred 18gb of stuff from my Hitachi HTS722020K9SA00 and the speed is 50's Mb/s, which is normal. Seagate ST9160821AS is slow as hell.
     
    brncao, Dec 11, 2009
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    User Retired 2 Notebook Nobel Laureate NBR Reviewer

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    CrystalDiskmark as posted in my previous response. It writes a file on the specified drive timing the duration, reporting the sequential write speed, amongst other parameters. 9.57-18MB/s is very slow for a 7200RPM drive. A 1.8" ZIF 4200rpm HDD can do better than that. Would double-check your e-sata drivers. e-sata should be seeing > 50MB/s sequential writes with a fast 7200RPM HDD.
     
    User Retired 2, Dec 11, 2009
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  6. brncao

    brncao Notebook Evangelist

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    Forgot to mention that the internal seagate drive is 5400rpm. Everything else is at 7200rpm. A 4200rpm can do better than my 5400rpm drive? hmm...

    I've updated the drivers before.

    Looks like my brand new seagate ext. hdd is the fastest of them all. Running windows on that would be a lot more efficient than running my current internal drives!
     
    brncao, Dec 11, 2009
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