Benchmark Results: Real-World Copying
JPEG Images
We're really able to see the benefit of adopting USB 3.0-connected drives when it comes to transferring large files. But the performance picture isn't perfect.
Although Hitachi's 750 GB Touro Mobile Pro is a strong performer in the read test, it gets beaten by Western Digital's 2 TB My Passport for the first time in our round-up. It also succumbs to Samsung's S2 and a 500 GB version of itself. It also loses to the Samsung S2 in our write test.
As a test control, we have a couple of USB 2.0-based drives at the bottom of the chart. Their performance is very similar because they're being constrained by the bus' maximum throughput. Truly, USB 3.0 is instrumental in popping the cork on external storage performance.
MP3 Files
When we start moving compressed MP3 audio, the results appear largely similar. Western Digital's My Passport scores another win over Hitachi's Touro Mobile Pro, which takes second place in read performance. Hitachi reasserts itself in the write workload, though not by as large of a margin as the streaming Iometer numbers would have indicated.