500 GB Hard Disk Drive Round-Up

HD Tune

Now we have the results provided by HD Tune program.

Here we saw practically the same thing we had seen with the other programs: Seagate drives achieved the highest burst transfer rates and Western Digital drives achieved the lowest, with Samsung between them. The difference here was that the Hitachi drive we included in our round-up achieved a burst transfer rate on the same level as Seagate’s models.

Models from Seagate and Hitachi achieved a burst transfer rate, on average, 8% higher than the one achieved by Samsung HD502IJ, 25% higher than the one achieved by Western Digital RE3, 34% higher than the one achieved by Western Digital Caviar GP, 46% higher than the one achieved by Western Digital Caviar SE16 and 58% higher than the one achieved by Western Digital RE2.

The most important figure for most people is the average transfer rate. Here the champs were Western Digital RE3, Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 and Seagate SV35.3. As already explained, Western Digital RE3 is targeted to the enterprise market, Seagate SV35.3 is targeted to digital surveillance systems and Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 is targeted to the mainstream market.

These disks were, on average, 6% faster than Seagate Barracuda ES.2, 11% faster than Hitachi Deskstar P7K500, 20% faster than Samsung HD502IJ, 32% faster than Western Digital Caviar SE, 39% faster than Western Digital RE2, 40% faster than Western Digital Caviar SE16 and 47% faster than Western Digital Caviar GP.

Samsung HD502IJ was 16% faster than Western Digital Caviar SE16.

As explained before, the maximum transfer rate is achieved when the hard drive is reading data from its outer-most tracks.

Here the reviewed hard disk drives can be divided into four groups. Drives from the first group achieved the high
est transfer rate and in this group we find Seagate Barracuda 7200.11, Seagate SV35.3, Western Digital RE3 and Seagate Barracuda ES.2. Then in the second group we have Samsung HD502IJ and Hitachi Deskstar P7K500. In the third group we have Western Digital Caviar SE, Western Digital RE2 and Western Digital Caviar SE16. And alone in the fourth group we have Western Digital Caviar GP.

Disks from the first group were, on average, 20% faster than the disks on the second group, 33% faster than the disks on the third group and 41% faster than the disk from the fourth group.

Disks from the second group were, on average, 11% faster than the disks on the third group and 17% faster than the disk from the fourth group.

As explained before, the minimum transfer rate is achieved when the hard drive is reading data from its inner-most tracks.

Here again Western Digital RE3, Seagate SV35.3 and Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 were the disks with the highest transfer rate. The drive from Samsung was the one with the lowest minimum transfer rate and this probably pulled down its average transfer rate.