PCPer File Copy Test

PC Perspective File-Copy Test v0.3


Our custom PCPer-FC test does some fairly simple file creation and copy routines in order to test the storage system for speed.  The script creates a set of files of varying sizes, times the creation process, then copies the same files to another partition on the same hard drive and times the copy process as well.  There are four file patterns that we used to try and find any strong or weak points in the hardware: 10 files @ 1000 MB each, 100 files @ 100 MB each, 500 files @ 10 MB each and 1000 files at 1 MB each. 

Western Digital SATA 6Gb/sec 1TB Caviar Black (WD1002FAEX) Review - Storage 31

Western Digital SATA 6Gb/sec 1TB Caviar Black (WD1002FAEX) Review - Storage 32

We named the new unit “WD CB 1TB” for these charts.  The top three entries show the same drive under the three different controller / driver combinations.

For starters we notice an immediate trend – the faster interface had negligible impact on bulk file creation and transfer for spinning disks.  This was somewhat expected, as the disk itself remains the bottleneck and doubling interface throughput does little to help the matter.

As for how this new drive performs compared to its brothers, it does quite well.  File creation was comparable to the 2TB models, even close to the enterprise class RE4.  File copy operations fell a bit further behind, likely due to changes to the caching algorithm and possibly slower seeks as compared to the fire breathing 2TB models.

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