New Hitachi 1TB vs Stock & Other Drives (Benchmarks)

[GotPro]

Ok... so... tonight my most badass girlfriend actually BOUGHT me another 1 TB drive as a surprise for the Mac Pro!!! God, you gotta love that girl! This replaced the stock 320 Gig drive which I HAD previously been using for Media only (Itunes library and the like) with a 1TB Western Digital Green drive (Best buy w/ coupon for $206).

Well, I thought I'd devise a little benchmark to test just how crazy fast the Hitachi 1TB that I use as a boot drive is vs the original drive that Apple shipped (320 Western Digital) and others in my system...

So this is what I did. Might be right, might be wrong, don't really care... but I THINK this is a great representative of total, complete "speed and throughput" of a hard drive.

I created a folder called "Test Folder" on my Hitachi 1TB (Boot Drive). I added to this folder the following subfolders / files:

1 Folder Entitled "Movies" containing 12 Large Files = 8.5 Gigabytes
1 Folder Entitled "Guns n Roses" containing 67 Medium Files = 455 Megabytes
Copied / Added the OS X "Extensions" Folder containing 271 Small Files = 208 Megabytes
Copied / Added the OS X "Frameworks" Folder containing 57,263 Tiny Files = 1.49 Gigabytes

This gave me a total of 57,617 Files of VARYING Sizes totaling 10.64 Gigabytes.

I then proceeded to DUPLICATE this folder on each of my drives... which I believe shows a great overall speed indicator...

"read/write/in-cache/out-of-cache/tiny to huge file size"

And as it is doing all of the reading / writing on the SAME DRIVE... that eliminates any drive compatibility problems, slow to fast drive copy speed interpretation, bus issues, etc.

And here are my results... pretty stunning if you ask me... I think Apple really stuck some DOG SLOW drives in there as stock. I honestly think they should be ashamed of themselves.

Time to Duplicate Folder on Stock Hard Drive: (Western Digital 320 Gig WD3200AAJS) = 9 Minutes, 08 Seconds

Time to Duplicate Folder on Hitachi 1TB Replacement: (Hitachi HDS721010KLA330) = 5 Minutes, 35 Seconds

Time to Duplicate Folder on Western Digital 1TB Drive: (Western Digital WD10EACS-00ZJBO) = 6 Minutes, 20 Seconds

Time to Duplicate Folder on Older WD 500GB Drive: (Western Digital 5000AAJS-32YFA0) = 7 Minutes, 18 Seconds

Time to Duplicate Folder on Older WD 400GB Drive: (Western Digital D4000KD-00NAB0) = 8 Minutes, 52 Seconds


Obviously, the absolute DOG of a drive amongst these was the stock Western Digital 320 Gig drive which couldn't outrun a few older Western Digital drives that were collecting dust in an old PC I had and are a couple years old... Does that make anyone else mad?

Well, I'm not too worried about it anyway... I spent ~ $425 for what Apple charges $950 for... upgrading to (2) 1 TB Drives... and I still have the ol' crappy 320 Gigger' for an external Time Machine drive for my baby's Macbook Pro... so I suppose I'm not complaining... it's just... Damn... you know? The fastest machine on the planet ships with an apparently debilitating drive in stock form... Just boggles the mind!

Anyway... just thought I'd share my findings!

Enjoy.. or flame away... either way, it's all good baby!

 

[wesk702]

is that a 10000 rpm drive?

 

[GotPro]

is that a 10000 rpm drive?

Nope... All drives are 7200 RPM with the exception of the WD 1TB drive which I believe is a variable speed drive...

 

[wesk702]

pimp

 

[NATO]

Nope... All drives are 7200 RPM with the exception of the WD 1TB drive which I believe is a variable speed drive...

The current 'Green Power' Western Digital drives (750GB and 1TB drives) are 5400RPM (fixed speed). The 'variable' speed is Western Digital's marketing spin in that in future drives, they can use faster and slower fixed speeds and brand them all under the 'Green Power' brand. The drives definitely do not dynamically change their speed, they have a fixed speed and always operate at that speed.

The 'Green Power' and 'Variable Speed' marketing slogans are designed so that people aren't put off by the slower 5400RPM speed of the drive (although they apparently have performance similar to 7200RPM-class drives)

Just thought I'd mention that, as there's a lot of confusion out there regarding the Green Power drives...

 

[GotPro]

Thanks... I appreciate that...

Speed wasn't so much a concern for me with the WD 1TB Drive... as it's only being used for Media Storage... nothing else... so a slower, more reliable, quieter drive is very suitable for that purpose.

Thanks for clarifying it...

It was also the 2nd fastest drive... trouncing even the stock 7200 rpm drive.

Sad, huh?

 

[TheThirdMan]

This site has an extremely exhaustive comparison of a load of hard drives, including the Seagate 1tb and Western Digital green drives. Im going for the WD one, consumes half the power, super quiet and in many benchmarks performs almost identical to the seagate one, plus it's £20 cheaper. Is this the longest linking text you've ever seen? I should have put most of the text in regular text, but i cant be bothered to change it now. Plus if you're browsing super fast, it's a larger clickable area...

 

[Thiol]

Does anyone know anything about these new 640 GB drives with 320 GB platters. People seem excited, but I have yet to see any benchmarks...