WD Passport Studio 500GB FW800 Benchmarks

[Aboo]

Hi Folks,

I was interested in picking up this WD Passport Studio 500GB Drive as its on sale for around a 110 dollars locally. Before I drop a 110 bucks, I wanted to ask if anyone has FW800 benchmarks (i.e. HDTune, HDTach, Mac OS X equivalent, etc.) for this drive, or if they would be willing to record some for me!

I've searched the internet for these, and although I have found them for FW400, I haven't come across any for FW 800.

The FW400 interface seems to have a sustained transfer speeds in the mid to high 30s MB/sec, so I'm hoping that the FW800 will be around the high 50s to low 60s MB/sec.

 

[Griffter]

I can't talk for that specific model, but I use a WD Mybook (a couple of years old now) with Firewire 800, and the speed is very impressive, much better than USB 2

 

[The General]

I have that specific model of harddrive. If you like, tell me what to do and I will run benchmarks for you when I get home. I've never benchmarked a harddrive before, so you'll have to tell me exactly what to do.

EDIT: Actually, I just realized that I have it with me in my backpack. I can do it right now if you like. I have Windows 7 and OS X to work with.

 

[Aboo]

I have that specific model of harddrive. If you like, tell me what to do and I will run benchmarks for you when I get home. I've never benchmarked a harddrive before, so you'll have to tell me exactly what to do.

EDIT: Actually, I just realized that I have it with me in my backpack. I can do it right now if you like. I have Windows 7 and OS X to work with.

Hi General,

If you have windows, you can use a program called HDTune. Just google HDTune. Its a free download. Once you download and install it, connect the drive via firewire 800 and open up HDTune. Within HDTune, select the WD Passport Drive at the top left-hand corner, and just run the program. It will take less than 1 minute. Post a screenshot of the benchmark.

If you can repeat these within Mac OS, that would be great as well. The program for Mac OS is Xbench. Its also free, and you can google it for the download. When using XBench, just select the hard disk test, and again choose the passport drive. If you could post screen shots of that, it would be great!!

Thanks so much for your willingness to help!

 

[Aboo]

Update 1: XBench Results from My Drive

Okay - I got a pretty darn good deal on this model hard drive and today was the last day to purchase, so I went ahead and bought it. Alas, I noticed that my drive was manufactured in November of 2008. I believe that for a while when this drive first came out (in Nov 2008), WD had used slower three platter Samsung drives as a stop gap before using their own WD Scorpio Blue 2 platter 500gb drives. So I might have the slower Samsung drive . Anyways, I am including a copy of the Xbench scores as a reference.

If The General could still post his/her benchmarks, that would offer a good comparison, and perhaps help me justify my purchase if I see the same scores

Thanks again!

 

[Aboo]

Hi Guys,

To benefit anyone else who may be interested in looking at comparisons, I was able to borrow my friend's 500GB Passport Essentials USB drive. I ran XBench in OS X and got the following results. Hopefully, these benchmarks will offer some more "real world" transfer rates.

Enjoy!

 

[Eddyisgreat]

I believe once you get to FW800 speeds raid in any flavor would be beneficial (I think..hrm...) . You can get away with a single disk with USB / FW 400 but in the FW800 realm you'll benefit from raid. SSDs in a raid (and some SSDs in even a single configuration) will easily outstrip an eSATA connection.

This is from a G-Raid Mini which consists of two 5200 RPM drives in a raid 0 (striped no mirror) configuration.

 

[The General]

Windows 7:

OS X:

 

[Aboo]

The General,

Thank you very much for running those benchmarks and posting them. Your assistance is greatly appreciated! It looks like our drives are running at about the same. Out of curiosity, which unibody MBP are you running this on? I think you may have the uMBP 17" correct?

Thanks again!

 

[The General]

The General,

Thank you very much for running those benchmarks and posting them. Your assistance is greatly appreciated! It looks like our drives are running at about the same. Out of curiosity, which unibody MBP are you running this on? I think you may have the uMBP 17" correct?

Thanks again!

Yeah, I have the 17" 2.66Ghz w/ 4GB of RAM, 500GB 7200rpm + 500GB 5400rpm internal harddrives.

 

[Aboo]

Yeah, I have the 17" 2.66Ghz w/ 4GB of RAM, 500GB 7200rpm + 500GB 5400rpm internal harddrives.

General, thanks for the confirmation and thanks once again for posting those benchmarks. Based on your results as well as the results posted from the Passport 500GB Essentials (i.e. the USB interface), its clear that firewire 800 is much much much faster than straight USB. Perhaps this thread can serve as reference for future purchasers of the WD passport studio.

 

[richard.mac]

Windows 7:

OS X:

what firewire drivers are you using in Windows 7? or is it just the included Microsoft one?

 

[The General]

what firewire drivers are you using in Windows 7? or is it just the included Microsoft one?

I just used the bootcamp drivers on my Leopard disk.

 

[richard.mac]

yeah i cant even get my firewire 400 drive to even show up in 7. im using the drivers that came with 10.5.0. might have to download the recent ones.