Testing (continued):
The next phase of testing involved executing HD Tune version 2.55. HD Tune is a benchmark application that allows you to quickly and easily assess the performance of just about any hard drive. It was installed under Windows Vista Home Premium (64-Bit), and executed on both hard drives to be compared.
In the image below we see a screen capture of the HD Tune 2.55 results for the Seagate Free Agent Go 320GB external hard drive.
And in the following chart we see the results for the Seagate Free Agent Go compared to the Western Digital Scorpio 320GB drive installed in the Eagle Tech enclosure. The CPU usage (%), access time (ms), average transfer rate (MB/s), and maximum transfer rate (MB/s) are all shown. Lower numbers are better for CPU usage and access time, while higher numbers are better for the two transfer rate values.
The results are very close (except for access time), but the Western Digital drive does put up better numbers across the board. The differences in the other results are just about negligible, and you can't really say the Free Agent Go lost since it did quite well overall.
With a strong showing in the testing portion of the review, the Seagate Free Agent Go 320GB external hard drive proves that it has everything necessary to be a worthwhile purchase. It is attractively styled, comes bundled with some very useful software, and is backed by a 5-year warranty, but above all else it provides transfer rates that make it worth using.
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