Two 2TB Hard Drives For Storage Applications, Reviewed

Benchmark Results: Access Time And I/O Performance

Access Time

Access time is less relevant, unless you need to use the drive to host your operating system, swap file, and applications. In this case, Samsung’s drive shows undesirably long access times. Seagate’s Constellation ES wins again thanks to the decreased rotational latency, which is an effect of the faster 7,200 RPM spindle speed again.

I/O Performance

It almost seems as if both drives weren’t designed for I/O-intensive activity. Fast 3.5” hard drives deliver between 120 and 180 I/O operations per second, depending on the chosen benchmark pattern. However, both drives (even the Constellation ES) underperform on this test.

This most likely results from a consequent market categorization: 3.5” high-capacity hard drives aren’t meant and aren’t ideal for delivering high I/O numbers. Faster 15,000 RPM enterprise hard drives and enterprise flash SSDs in particular are the premier choice for such applications.