| Seagate Momentus 7200.2 160GB SATA Hard Drive
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Testing (continued):
Real World Data Transfers:
Real world testing was broken into two phases; reading and writing. A folder containing 150 sub-folders and a total of 2400 files was used for all transfers. These files were generally small in size, and consisted of a mix of images, documents, html files, and other items that together may well represent a typical "My Documents" folder. This test might provide a good indication of how quickly one might expect their "My Documents" folder to be backed up; something I recommend doing on a regular basis.
The 200GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 was the original location of these files for the writing tests, and was the final location for these files for the reading tests. A separate directory was used on the 200GB drive for reading and writing, and as mentioned, the system was rebooted after each transfer test. A handheld stop watch was used to record the time it took to complete each transfer, and these values were used to calculate the effective data transfer rate.
Although the values in the chart above may seem low, transferring a high number of small files slows the effective rate down when compared to transferring a small number of large files. What the chart does reveal is that the 7200.2 is twice as fast in real world performance!
Thermal Testing:
Thermal testing consisted of monitoring the idle and load temperatures of the hard drives' outer surface using an external digital thermometer while the drives were just placed in still, open air with no fans or housings to interfere with passive cooling. The idle condition consisted of the system just sitting at the Windows desktop with no extra applications running for a period of at least one hour. The load condition was created by running SiSoft Sandra's Physical Disks Benchmark in a looping pattern for a one hour period.
Here it can be seen that the improvements Seagate made in energy efficiency translate into low operating temperatures. The 7200 RPM 7200.2 drive was able to run as cool (or cooler) than its 5400 RPM ancestors. Cooler components are generally longer-lived, so being able to combine strong performance with a low operating temperature is double bonus.
Although not tested, the energy efficiency will also lead to longer battery life when this drive is actually used in a notebook computer. Hard drives can be one of the key contributors to battery drain, and the features of the Seagate Momentus 7200.2 make welcome improvements to that issue.
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