How would you performance test and compare two blank label hard drives?

c627627 · Jul 2, 2010

Say you had two blank label same capacity hard drives from two different imaginary companies, how would you compare them to determine spindle speed, cache size, performance if you did not know what they were and major company's disk utilities wouldn't recognize them to tell you the make and model so you could only rely on your own performance tests and findings.

Know Nuttin · Jul 2, 2010

I'd run HDD Tune, Crystalmark, Atto, and compare access times (random and sequential) and throughput (random and sequential).

c627627 · Jul 2, 2010

ok so

1. http://www.hdtune.com/
2. http://crystalmark.info/?lang=en
3. http://www.attotech.com/products/product.php?sku=Disk_Benchmark

Any way to tell drive's cache, spindle speed... does this really matter when comparing which drive is "better"?

Know Nuttin · Jul 2, 2010

those benches will tell you enough to know which drive is better. You don't need to know spindle speed/cache size. As they say, the proof is in the pudding (in this case, the benches). Spec's are meaningless if performance is lacking.

Mr Alpha · Jul 2, 2010

Well you could tell the spindle speed based on the access time, but drives do report their spindle speed to windows. That is how windows can tell the difference between a hard drive and a SSD. Some drives also report their cache size. Can't you just use some hardware info program and look it up?

c627627 · Jul 2, 2010

Mr Alpha said:
...drives do report their spindle speed to windows. Some drives also report their cache size. Can't you just use some hardware info program and look it up?

That is the topic of this thread. Where do they report it inside Windows and which hardware info program detects this info if you don't know which drive you have connected, I actually do know but have always wanted to get this info based on detected performance.

EarthDog · Jul 2, 2010

Not sure where to find it in Windows but try Belarc Advisor to see if that pulls the info... It does DETAILED HWare and SWare.

BTW, did disabling the second floppy work out for you from that other thread?

Mr Alpha · Jul 2, 2010

c627627 said:
That is the topic of this thread. Where do they report it inside Windows and which hardware info program detects this info if you don't know which drive you have connected, I actually do know but have always wanted to get this info based on detected performance.

I've always found SIW to be useful in that regard. But the info is not based on detected performance but on what the drive tells windows.

compwizpro · Jul 2, 2010

Everast should be able to pull that kind of hardware information.

As far as getting read/write speeds and seek times, i've used HDTach in the past. Its a small piece of software that does burst test, squential read test, cpu test and random access tests and I think is pretty good at giving you performance information.

Enjoy!

c627627 · Jul 2, 2010

All right, so we have four, which one is better than the others, any personal preferences:

1. http://www.hdtune.com/
2. http://crystalmark.info/?lang=en
3. http://www.attotech.com/products/product.php?sku=Disk_Benchmark
4. http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach

EarthDog said:
BTW, did disabling the second floppy work out for you from that other thread?

c627627 said:
Even if Legacy Diskette A is disabled in BIOS, neither A nor B drive letters become available for hard dives.

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EarthDog · Jul 2, 2010

HD Tune and HD Tach are nice high level benches...

CDM will get a bit deeper as will ATTO.

compwizpro · Jul 2, 2010

HDTach allows you to compare your drive against a database of other harddrives to see how your speed compares altough I don't know the integrity of the database as far as actual speeds go.

ratbuddy · Jul 2, 2010

Don't forget PCMark Vantage.

c627627 · Jul 2, 2010

Too many suggestions

I have two 7200 drives and one really old 7200 drive and I wish to compare them to the new 5900 drive I just got which is surprisingly responsive. I can't be going through all of these benchmarks, narrow the choices down for me

The 5900 RPM is a 2 TB, does it matter where the tests take place (when it's empty vs. when it's full)?

ratbuddy · Jul 2, 2010

c627627 said:
Too many suggestions

I have two 7200 drives and one really old 7200 drive and I wish to compare them to the new 5900 drive I just got which is surprisingly responsive. I can't be going through all of these benchmarks, narrow the choices down for me

The 5900 RPM is a 2 TB, does it matter where the tests take place (when it's empty vs. when it's full)?

If you can only run one, I'd make it PCMark Vantage. It runs a variety of real world type stuff that will tell you more about real performance than a bunch of synthetic throughput benches.

Mr Alpha · Jul 3, 2010

I wholly agree with ratbuddy. PCMark Vantage gives you more useful information than all those other synthetic benchmarks put together.

macklin01 · Jul 8, 2010

Ideally choose one that lets you plot all your tests on one graph.

c627627 · Jul 8, 2010

They appear to agree that if you have two blank label drives, PCMark Vantage would give you the best idea which one is better. I'll try it, unless someone has a better suggestion.

c627627 · Jul 15, 2010

All I want is to test hard drives, but PCMark Vantage has a tricky trial.

You have to sign up to get a trial key. But when you do it isn't emailed automatically, so maybe wait an hour or what? Then there's something about only being able to run it once?

I just want to test a bunch of hard drives and see which one is "better". What are the one, two, three step instructions on how to quickly get an idea which hard drive in the bunch is the "best"!? I don't want to spend too much time on this, I just want to know what to run and which numbers to look at to get the general idea.

c627627 · Jul 15, 2010

How about ZDNet WinBench 99 2.0 which has has two options for:

Business Disk WinMark 99 is a real-world simulation based on three office application suites - Microsoft Office 97, Lotus SmartSuite and Corel WordPerfect Suite 8, as well as a web browser, Netscape Navigator. They are quite dated, but should still reflect the usage patterns of users in an office environment using such applications. The test runs through a script that keeps multiple applications open, while it performs tasks that switches between those applications and Netscape Navigator. The result is the average transfer rate during the script run.

High-End Disk WinMark 99 is a real-world simulation based on AVS/Express 3.4, FrontPage 98, MicroStation SE, Photoshop 4.0, Premiere 4.2, Sound Forge 4.0 and Visual C++ 5.0. However, it differs by running the applications serially, instead of simultaneously. There are individual results for each application but in this comparison, we will be looking only at the weighted average score, which is the average transfer rate during the tests.

I'll run this program and get numbers for these two options for each hard drive, good enough?

How would you performance test and compare two blank label hard drives?

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