Testing:

To test the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk 3TB drive, the following base system was used:

» Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 (2.66GHz) processor
» Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R motherboard
» eVGA GTX 275 PCIe video card
» Seagate 80GB SATA 3Gbps hard drive
» Seagate 1.5TB SATA 3Gbps hard drive
» 4GB OCZ Technology Gold 1333MHz DDR3 memory
» Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit operating system

In order to benchmark the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk drive, the following applications were used:

» HD Tach 3.0.4.0
» Everest Ultimate Edition 5.50
» CrystalDiskMark 3.0
» Real World File Transfers

HD Tach 3.0.4.0:

HD Tach is usually the first benchmark I run on a hard drive. For Burst Speed, the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk USB 2.0 connection performs slightly better than the other two drives included here. The interesting part is the huge difference in speed that USB 3.0 received.



The next graph looks at the Average Read speed as reported by HD Tach. Both Seagate drives are around 35MB/s, while the Western Digital MyBook was slightly less. Using the USB 3.0 adapter, the GoFlex Desk was about 3 times faster than USB 2.0.



Finally, HD Tach evaluates the Random Access for each drive. In the first two charts higher is better, but this time lower scores are better. The GoFlex outperformed both the FreeAgent Go and the Western Digital drive by several milliseconds whether connected by USB 2.0 or USB 3.0.