Data Transfer Diagram

The new Western Digital drive is one of the first to exceed 40 MB/s, making it the fastest IDE hard drive we've ever tested. As a matter of fact, the drive is able to sustain this excellent result within the first half of the medium. In the second half, the data transfer rate drops to a minimum of approximately 25 MB/s.

Data Transfer Performance

The comparison chart clearly shows that the WD1000 is very fast indeed. For the vast majority of applications, the maximum transfer speed is the most interesting number. However, applications that require a constant data stream (audio or video encoding, editing) do not benefit much from high maximum rates, and instead benefit from high minimum rates. Though the WD1000 may be slightly slower than Seagate's Barracuda ATA IV (ST380021A), you have to take the bigger capacity into account (see transfer diagram above). That means you will get a better minimum transfer rate than with the Seagate drive as long as you do not use more thn 80 GB.