Testing Methodology and System Setup
Testing MethodsWe have switched to an upgraded storage testing rig so we can reach the greater IOPS of modern Solid State Drives. Future reviews will use updated values as we re-run our test suite on previous hardware. Luckily, the upgrade had a negligible effect on standard hard disks.
2TB Green Beastie awaits testing goodness…
Our tests are a good mix of synthetic and real-world benchmarks. PCMark, IOMeter, HDTach, HDTune, Yapt and our custom File Copy test round out the selection to cover just about all bases. If you have any questions about our tests just drop into the Storage Forum and we’ll help you out!
Test System Setup
For this test we had to play a bit of catch up, since the largest drive we had previously benched was the WD Caviar SE16 750GB. To round out the testing, we brought in both early and late models of the WD 1TB GP. A little known fact is that WD silently updated their earlier GP line, dropping the platter count from 4 to 3 and simultaneously increasing aureal density from 250GB/platter to just over 333GB/platter.
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Hard Drive Test System Setup |
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CPU |
Intel Core i7 920 |
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Motherboard |
Asus P6T |
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Memory |
Corsair Dominator 6GB DDR3-1600 |
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Hard Drive |
Intel X25-M 80GB SSD
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Sound Card |
Asus Xonar D1 |
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Video Card |
EVGA Geforce GTX 260 Core 216 |
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Video Drivers |
Geforce 181.22 |
| Power Supply | Corsair 620HX |
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DirectX Version |
DX9.0c
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Operating System |
Windows XP X64 SP2
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- PCMark05
- Yapt
- IOMeter
- HDTach
- HDTune
- PCPer File Copy Test
I learned a lot here but have
I learned a lot here but have not yet been able to open my case. Fortunately, I’ve lost no data. All my losses have been the backups of data on internal drives. Ironically, the backup drives failed, never the drives they were protecting. I intend to buy a replacement, but never again a Western Digital. I have two Maxtors running four & two years respectively. My next purchase will be another Maxtor.