WinBench 99 - Transfer Rate Test

We ran WinBench 99's Disk Transfer Rate Test to get a better measure of just how well the transfer rates are over the course of the entire disk. The Disk Transfer Rate test reads from the media in a linear fashion from the beginning (first track) to the end (last track). The numbers below represent the ceiling and floor of the transfer rates throughout the test.

Seagate 500GB 7200.9


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Hitachi 7K500


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Western Digital WD4000YR


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As we saw during our first look at the 500GB 7200.9, the drive started its read at just under 64MB/sec and ended at about 32MB/sec on the inside of the platter. The WD4000YR started its read just above the 64MB/sec mark and ended at a quicker 38MB/sec rate. The 7K500's read began similarly at just above 64MB/sec, but ended much lower at about 30.5MB/sec. The WD4000YR and 7K500's read method differed as the drive stepped down after covering certain parts of the disk while the 500GB 7200.9 drive had a steadier decrease in read speed.

Pure Hard Disk Performance - IPEAK HDTach – Sequential Read Speed/Burst Speed
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  • Visual - Saturday, December 3, 2005 - link

    i cant imagine what error would hang my drive for 8 seconds :/ and if it really happened, even in recoverable error, i'd not trust that drive again anyway. so it'd be better to mark it "failed"
  • Lakeshow - Saturday, December 3, 2005 - link

    Yeah I read that article on storagereview.com couple days after I got my WD4000YR and it kind of bothers me.

    Oh well, what are you gonna do? I absolutely love this drive. I can only hope this drive will live until my next voluntary upgrade.
  • Lifted - Friday, December 2, 2005 - link

    The HD Tach screenshots say "for non-commercial or evaluation use only, see license agreement."

    Hmmmmm. Anandtech is non-commercial?
  • Gannon - Friday, December 2, 2005 - link

    I'd like to see more tests done on drives that are at least 80% full because a lot of us pack our drives full of stuff and the performance we end up getting is when we've filled it. While these tests are good and all, I think they inflate the actual scores of how a drive is really used. No drive sits with just XP and a game or two and a couple of test files, that bias's the tests toward unrealistic use of how hard disks are used, especially big ones over 160GB. I fill my drives regularly and I have over 800GB needless to say I'm backing up stuff to DVD's just to have enough space to perform other operations.
  • WileCoyote - Friday, December 2, 2005 - link

    Why does everyone want Anandtech to benchmark their current system? Run your own benchmark if you want to know the speed of your hard-drive/computer. I think the articles here are perfect - they help me decide what to purchase in the future. I don't need an article to make me feel good about what I already have. I like the current format of articles that educate me on my next purchase.
  • johnsonx - Friday, December 2, 2005 - link

    time to cut down on the pron addiction
  • Olaf van der Spek - Friday, December 2, 2005 - link

    > We were also surprised to see the WD4000YR perform so well, since it is using the 1 st generation 1.5Gb/sec interface.

    That's a joke, right?
    I hope you weren't really expecting a significant performance improvement from a faster interface (300 mbyte/s instead of 150 mbyte/s while HDD's are more near 75 mbyte/s and only during seqential access).
  • bob661 - Friday, December 2, 2005 - link

    I think the interface increases benefit RAID performance more than singledrive performance.
  • Olaf van der Spek - Friday, December 2, 2005 - link

    I don't think so, as (without involvement of port multipliers) SATA is a point to point architecture.
  • yacoub - Friday, December 2, 2005 - link

    Or you can go buy a pair of 200GB Samsung SpinPoint SP2004C drives for under $100 each and have a much quieter drive setup. :)

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