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foodfightr
10-24-2005, 01:51 PM
Want to know which hard drive is king? You'll get a lot more out of this article by reviewing the research method, rather than just skipping to the results!

Today (Oct 24) AnandTech released a series of hard drive benchmarks, you can view that article here (http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2577).

The hard drives that peaked my interest were the Western Digital Raptor, Western Digital 1600JS, Hitachi T7K250 and the Seagate 7200.7 to 7200.9 series.

I comprised two tables, a compilation of all the "Higher Score Is Better" benchmarks and a compilation of all the "Lower Score Is Better" benchmarks.

I then decided to add two more tables, which would be the WEIGHTED scores of each table. After the scores have been weighted, the data can be compared equally. For example, you'd be able to compare load time in seconds (Ex: 23.12) to benchmark scores (452.35).

I then totaled the scores from the weighted tables. To make the data easier to read, I decided to remove the decimal place. I multiplied each number by 1000 and rounded. (2138 is nicer to look at than 2.138!)

So now I have two things:

1. The total (weighted) performance of each drive based on "Higher Is Better" benchmarks.

WD Raptor 2138
WD 1600JS 2087
HT T7K250 2015
SG 7200.9 1988
SG 7200.8 1932
SG 7200.7 1840

2. The total (weighted) performance of each drive based on "Lower Is Better" benchmarks.

WD Raptor 1537
WD 1600JS 1811
HT T7K250 1720
SG 7200.9 1669
SG 7200.8 1615
SG 7200.7 1649

To determine a winner, I took the first total and subtracted the second total. This way the drives with the best "Higher Is Better" score would only be penalized by the greater its "Lower Is Better" score is.

I found the results to be startling!

Final Results (Higher is Better!)

WD Raptor 602
WD 1600JS 277
HT T7K250 295
SG 7200.9 319
SG 7200.8 317
SG 7200.7 190

The raptor performed almost TWICE as well as seagate's brand new 7200.9 series, which performed better than Hitachi and Western Digital.

Download the entire mathematical calculation spreadsheet here (http://www.godscandy.com/hdtest.xls)!

Shyfty
10-30-2005, 01:18 PM
First post "Hi all" :wave:


Nice work! I appreciate your efforts...especially as I just went out and bought a WD Raptor 74 GB HDD. I am happy to know it ranks at the top of the list... When are the Raptor 2's coming out hmmm something to google...