HD Tune Pro
We start by running the HD Tune Pro benchmark:
This is a quite an impressive result for a
2.5” hard disk, delivering an average of 85MB/s across the drive. Those
interested in high throughput such as for video editing can create a 500GB
partition, which would give a throughput of roughly 109MB/s to 90MB/s across
the partition. Access time is also pretty good for a 5400RPM hard disk.
HD Tach
HD Tach is another popular low-level benchmark
carried out on hard disks. It performs below the file system level and also
carries out a write test:
With additional read-out guidelines, we can
clearly see that this hard disk is capable of maintaining about 100MB/s read
and write all the way to about the 400GB mark. For those who require high
sequential throughput and additional capacity, this hard disk would make a
pretty good upgrade from a 500GB or smaller hard disk. Again, for maximum
throughput, the drive could be partitioned such that the OS gets a small
partition at the start (if not stored on a separate SSD), the data stored on a
400GB-500GB partition, and a final partition using the remaining capacity for
storing data that does not need as fast throughput, such as for retaining completed
video editing projects.
ATTO disk benchmark
ATTO has become a standard tool for measuring
the data throughput of hard drives, flash drives and memory cards. It measures
the performance of reading and writing, using different file sizes and block
sizes.
The following is with the hard disk
completely empty:
For 8KB transfers and larger, this hard
disk seems to have no problem meeting its rated read and write throughputs.
Now let’s see how this compares with the
partitions starting at the 50%, 75% and 90% marks:
ATTO – Read performance
ATTO – Write performance
Read and Write performances are roughly
equal, reaching about maximum throughput for 8KB and larger transfers
regardless of the physical location. Like the HD Tach result, we get a peak
throughput of about 110MB/s read and write at the start of the drive, dropping
to 60MB/s at the 90% mark.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0
Crystal Disk Mark is quite a handy
benchmarking application, as it focuses on the file sizes that can cause a
problem on a system drive or external drive.
The following are the test results. Like
ATTO, we ran CrystalDiskMark on each partition to test performance at the 0%
mark, 50% mark, 75% mark and 90% mark, with the results shown in the order
below, respectively:
The 4K results are pretty good for a
5400RPM hard disk, with the empty (0%) 4K test results outperforming the CrystalDiskMark
result in our earlier Samsung F4 2TB review. On the other hand, these
results are much lower than a typical 7200RPM hard disk. As we approach the end
of the hard disk, the threaded read performance drops off to just 0.794MB/s at
the 90% position.
512KB random read/write results are
reasonable for a 5400RPM hard disk, with these throughputs maintained pretty
well through about 75% of the hard disk.
Summary
The read and write transfer rates are very
good for a 2.5” 5400RPM hard disk, with reasonable performance for random 4K IO
read and write operations. The drive starts off at roughly 110MB/s read and
write speed and maintains roughly 100MB/s until about the 400GB mark. This
makes this hard disk useful for video editing or fast sequential throughput,
especially if the OS can be placed on a separate drive.
