Practical tests: Files
Moving onto the practical tests, we started by looking at write and read speeds for various groups of files. These groups were composed as follows:
- Extra large: 731.17 MB on average
- Large files: 5.2 MB on average
- Medium sized files: 800.88 KB on average
- Small files: 48.78 KB on average
We used a RamDisk as the source or the target for reads or writes on the hard drive. Given the speed of recent hard drives and so as to obtain results that are less subject to variation, we used Robocopy with some in-house software that allows us to carry the tests out continuously. The files were read and written on a partition that begins halfway into the drive.
[ Reads ] [ Writes ]In reads, with the exception of small files with which the Barracuda Green dominates, the 7200 rpm drives are fastest. The 7K3000 heads the field, followed by the Caviar Black and the Barracuda XT. The 5x00 rpm drives are however not too far behind, with the exception of the Caviar Green which didn’t manage to get over 100 MB/s even in the three platter version, whatever the size of the files.
In writes, note the very weak showing by the four platter Caviar Green and the Barracuda Green with small files. These poor performances are linked to a badly managed Advanced Format 512e. At 7200 rpm, the Hitachi 7K3000 is fastest overall, followed by the Caviar Black, then the Barracuda XT but these two drives also struggle with (very) small files even if they don't drop to 2 MB/s. Among the 5400 rpm drives, the fastest are the Hitachi 5K3000 and the Samsung EcoGreen F4.
