Hard Drive, USB, and Firewire Performance

We will now test the hard drive, USB, and Firewire performance using HDTach. Results from these tests are important if you do a lot of disk writing and reading like copying media files, and transferring files between external devices. To compare, we are testing the different hard drives that came in Asus laptops (all 5400 RPM) and the Dell XPS M1710 which has a 7200RPM SATA drive. For USB and Firewire tests, we are using a ByteCC ME-740U2F enclosure with a ATA133 hard drive.

Asus Lamborghini VX1 Core 2 Duo Notebook Review - Mobile 71

HDTach
Hard Drive Burst, Random and Average Read Performance

Asus
VX1

Asus
W7J

Asus
W2J

Dell
M1710

Drive Details

Seagate
Momentus
5400 RPM
ATA-100

Hitachi
Travelstar
5400 RPM
SATA-150

Hitachi
Travelstar
5400 RPM
SATA-150

Hitachi
Travelstar
7200 RPM
SATA-150

Burst Speed
(MB/s, Higher is better)

82.2

118.4

115.9

114.4

Average Read Speed
(MB/s, Higher is better)

38.1

33.3

32.6

44.0

Random Access Speed
(ms, Lower is better)

16.5

17.9

17.9

15.4

Some really interesting results here! While the Asus Lamborghini does not use a SATA drive like all the other laptops, it actually comes out faster except when compared to the Dell XPS M1710 which is using a 7200 RPM SATA drive. This is certainly a surprise to me since I would have expected ATA-100 to be slower due to the interface.

Asus Lamborghini VX1 Core 2 Duo Notebook Review - Mobile 72

HDTach
USB 2.0 HDD Burst, Random and Average Read Performance

Asus
VX1

Asus
W7J

Asus
W2J

Dell
M1710

Burst Speed
(MB/s, Higher is better)

32.8

32.9

31.9

33.3

Average Read Speed
(MB/s, Higher is better)

29.4

31.2

29.8

30.4

Random Access Speed
(ms, Lower is better)

14.5

14.3

14.3

14.5

Asus Lamborghini VX1 Core 2 Duo Notebook Review - Mobile 73

HDTach
Firewire HDD Burst, Random and Average Read Performance

Asus
W2J

Asus
W7J

Asus
A7J

Dell
M1710

Burst Speed
(MB/s, Higher is better)

41.9

41.5

41.3

40.7

Average Read Speed
(MB/s, Higher is better)

34.7

34.4

34.3

33.6

Random Access Speed
(ms, Lower is better)

14.0

14.0

14.0

14.1

USB and Firewire performance is what you’ve come to expect from a Intel 945 mobile motherboard, however the VX1 does appear to have marginally better sequential read using Firewire.

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