Three More External USB 3.0 Drives Benchmarked

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Another trio of SuperSpeed USB 3.0 drives landed in our German lab recently. As some of the contenders we've benchmarked underperform compared to our expectations, it’s quite clear that hard drive speed matters again, now that we've moved beyond USB 2.0.

Comparison Table And Test Setup

Comparison Table

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ManufacturerPQISamsungTranscend
FamilyH566Story Station 3.0StoreJet 25M3
Model NumberRow 1 - Cell 1 HX-DT020EBTS500GSJ25M3
Capacity320 GB2000 GB500 GB
Other Capacities500, 640 GB1000, 1500 GB640 GB
Form Factor2.5"3.5"2.5"
InterfaceUSB 3.0USB 3.0USB 3.0
Weight184 g952 g202 g

Test Setup

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System Hardware
HardwareDetail
CPUIntel Core i7-920 (45 nm, 2.66 GHz, 8 MB Shared L3 Cache)
Motherboard (Socket 1366)Supermicro X8SAX, Revision: 1.0, Chipset Intel X58 + ICH10R, BIOS: 1.0B
RAM3 x 1 GB DDR3-1333 Corsair CM3X1024-1333C9DHX
HDDSeagate NL35 400 GB, ST3400832NS, 7200 RPM, SATA 1.5Gb/s, 8 MB Cache
Storage ControllerseSATA: onboard eSATA (ICH10R) USB 2.0: onboard USB 2.0 (ICH10R) USB 3.0: NEC D720200F1 (Gigabyte GA-USB3.0)
Power SupplyOCZ EliteXstream 800 W, OCZ800EXS-EU
Benchmarks
Performance Measurementsh2benchw 3.13
I/O PerformanceIOMeter 2008.08.18Fileserver-BenchmarkWebserver-BenchmarkDatabase-BenchmarkWorkstation-BenchmarkStreaming Reads and Writes
System Software and Drivers
Operating SystemWindows 7 Ultimate
Patrick Schmid and Achim Roos