Analysis: The Impact Of Shifting From 512 Byte To 4 KB Sectors

Test Setup And Transfer Diagrams

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System Hardware
HardwareDetails
CPUIntel Core i7-920 (45 nm, 2.66 GHz, 8MB Shared L3 Cache)
Motherboard (LGA 1366)Supermicro X8SAX Revision: 1.0, Chipset: Intel X58 + ICH10R, BIOS: 1.0B
RAM2 GB DDR3-1333 Corsair CM3X1024-1333C9DHX
HDDSeagate NL35 400 GB, ST3400832NS, 7200 RPM, SATA 3Gb/s, 8 MB Cache
Power SupplyOCZ EliteXstream 800 W, OCZ800EXS-EU
Benchmarks
Performance Measurementsh2benchw 3.12 PCMark Vantage 1.0
I/O PerformanceIOMeter 2006.07.27 Fileserver-Benchmark, Webserver-Benchmark, Database-Benchmark, Workstation-Benchmark, Streaming Reads, Streaming Writes
System Software & Drivers
DriverDetails
Operating SystemWindows Vista Ultimate SP1
Intel Chipset9.1.0.1007
AMD GraphicsRadeon 8.12
Intel Matrix Storage8.7.0.1007

Data Transfer Diagrams

The new 750 GB drive clearly outperforms the 640 GB model. However, this has probably little to do with the sector size change, which becomes more visible in other benchmarks.