Real World Data Transfers:

Real world data was transferred between each of the drives to determine read and write performance in MB/s. Each drive was tested with a collection of music and other small files that simulate the typical “My Documents” folder. Various folders totaling 5,207 files with a total size of 1.6GB were used for this test. Please note the test system was restarted after each transfer to ensure data was not unfairly cached. As you can see in the graphs below, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 drive performed very well beating out the closest competition by 13% in terms of write performance. Read performance revealed even better results, with the Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 reading data nearly 40% faster than the competition.



Thermal Testing:

Each of the test drives was evaluated for thermal characteristics in stagnant air. Temperatures of each drive were taken after the test machine idled for one hour. Next each drive was stressed with the SiSoft Sandra storage benchmark for a period of one hour at which time the load temperatures were recorded. Room temperature remained at 26ºC throughout testing. Results indicate the Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 drive temperature increased roughly 15% (up to 41 ºC) when loaded for an hour. We can conclude from these results that the Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 is rather efficient.