New Desktop Hard Drives: Speed Or Capacity?

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Comparison Table and Test Setup

Drive Comparison Table

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Manufacturer Samsung Samsung Western Digital Western Digital
Model EcoGreen F1 EcoGreen F2 WD Caviar Green WD Caviar Green
Model Number HD103UI HD502HI WD10EADS WD20EADS
Form Factor 3.5" 3.5" 3.5" 3.5"
Capacity 1000 GB 500 GB 1000 GB 2000 GB
Spindle Speed 5,400 RPM 5,400 RPM 5,400 RPM 5,400 RPM
Other Capacities 250, 320, 500, 640, 750 GB 1000, 1500 GB 1500, 2000 GB 1000, 1500 GB
Platters 3 1 3 4
Cache 32 MB 16 MB 32 MB 32 MB
NCQ Yes Yes Yes Yes
Interface SATA/300 SATA/300 SATA/300 SATA/300
Operating Temperature 0-60° C 0-60° C 5-55°C 0-60° C
Specified Idle Power 5.0 W 3.9 W 2.8 W 3.9 W
Measured Idle Power 4.3W 3.1 2.8 W 5.2
Operating shock (2 ms, read) 70 G 70 G 65 G 65 G
Warranty 3 years 3 years 3 years 3 years

Test Setup

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System Hardware
Hardware Details
CPU Intel Core i7-920 (45 nm, 2.66 GHz, 8 MB L2 Cache)
Motherboard (Socket 1366) Supermicro X8SAXRevision: 1.0Chipset: Intel X58 + ICH10RBios: 1.0B
RAM 2 GB DDR3-1333 Corsair CM3X1024-1333C9DHX
HDD Seagate NL35 400 GBST3400832NS7,200 RPM, SATA150, 8 MB
Power Supply OCZ EliteXstream 800 W OCZ800EXS-EU
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Benchmarks
Performance Measurements h2benchw 3.12PCMark Vantage 1.0
I/O Performance IOMeter 2006.07.27Fileserver-BenchmarkWebserver-BenchmarkDatabase-BenchmarkWorkstation-BenchmarkStreaming ReadsStreaming Writes
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System Software and Drivers
Driver Details
Operating System Windows Vista Ultimate SP1
Intel Chipset 9.1.0.1007
AMD Graphics Radeon 8.12
Intel Matrix Storage 8.7.0.1007