Seagate 120GB External Storage
by Purav Sanghani on September 29, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Real World Tests – File System Performance
For our Real World File System Performance tests, we have taken the original tests and tailored them for external drives. More specifically, instead of just measuring the time that it takes to copy, zip, and unzip within the same drive, we measure the time that it takes to perform these tasks from a SATA drive to the external device.
File Copy Operations
Interestingly, the Seagate drive operates slightly quicker than the E5 on its USB interface while copying a file within the drive itself. We performed about 15 runs of this test to verify the results as well.
For our Real World File System Performance tests, we have taken the original tests and tailored them for external drives. More specifically, instead of just measuring the time that it takes to copy, zip, and unzip within the same drive, we measure the time that it takes to perform these tasks from a SATA drive to the external device.
File Copy Operations
| File Copy – One 300MB File, seconds, lower is better | ||
| Within Drive | To Drive (From SATA) | |
| AcomData E5 320GB (USB) | 32.072 | 11.191 |
| AcomData E5 320GB (FireWire 400) | 20.573 | 11.334 |
| Seagate 120GB USB | 28.539 | 11.750 |
| File Copy – Three Hundred 1MB Files, seconds, lower is better | ||
| Within Drive | To Drive (From SATA) | |
| AcomData E5 320GB (USB) | 13.298 | 13.219 |
| AcomData E5 320GB (FireWire 400) | 12.962 | 12.813 |
| Seagate 120GB USB | 13.516 | 13.711 |
Interestingly, the Seagate drive operates slightly quicker than the E5 on its USB interface while copying a file within the drive itself. We performed about 15 runs of this test to verify the results as well.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
14 Comments
View All Comments
foot167 - Thursday, September 29, 2005 - link
I just returned the 300GB model today after 3 weeks of use. Everything I read about them said they were terrible but I had to give them a shot anyway. Sometimes my computer wouldn't recognize the drive. it would say no drive there. then on monday the drive decided that it was unformatted and needed to be reformatted. good thing that i kept a copy of everything i put on the external on my internal drives.the 300gb one can be had for under $200 and even less after rebates.
How about some reliability tests on these drives. Does the firewire/usb interface affect the reliability of these drives? Are they prone to crashing for some reason?
ScottyDog - Friday, September 30, 2005 - link
I agree with your comments about reliability with these external drives. I have one and have the same problems with the disk suddenly becoming "unformatted". I have done a google search and this is a huge problem with these external USB or Firewire chipsets whether they are are the Oxford or Prolific flavors.Somebody really needs to do an article about what is going on here as I have resorted to leaving my drive off unless I am doing a backup and then need to restore otherwise all my data gets destroyed.
I originally thought it might be due to write caching and changing it to safe mode but it makes no difference with mine. If I leave it on eventually it becomes "Unformatted".
type this into google and you will see this is a wide spread problem with these external drives: windows delayed write failure
Googer - Thursday, September 29, 2005 - link
Dosen't it have 1394? I won't buy an External HDD with out 1394a and/or 1394b.MASCARNHAS - Monday, June 21, 2010 - link
I've used Report and although its great, I've had better luck with WheresTheFreeSpace. It is Modeled after a PC application that is very popular called <a href="http://www.wheresthefreespace.com">Treesiz... (but its for Mac).</a>