Revitalizing an Older System On the Cheap: Two 160GB ATA Drives Under $80- Page 5/6
January 18, 2006
By
Thomas Soderstrom
Scoring
Test data for the Maxtor DiamondMax 10 and Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 compares Transfer Rates and Seek time, while published specifications are used for Noise and Warranty. A scale of 10 for each of these follows:
Since older systems use a 100MB/s interface, transfer rates from Sandra, H2benchw, and HD Tach are divided by 10 to put them on a scale of 10. The DiamondMax 10 managed to exceed 100MB/s a few times thanks to the drive's 133MB/s interface, but the average still falls well below 100. Adding the 12 transfer rates and dividing by 12 gives the DiamondMax 10 a combined average of 75.49MB/s, or 7.55 out of 10 points. The same method gives the 7200.9 a combined average of 71.63MB/s and 7.16 out of 10 points.
For seek times, we had to set a baseline for worst performance and compare both drives to it. Using 20ms as the baseline, we can average the read/write seek times from H2benchw and HD Tach, subtract them from 20, then divide by two to put 20ms on a scale of 10. This method provides the DiamondMax 10 a score of 3.53 out of 10 points, and the 7200.9 a meager 2.05 out of 10 points.
Averaging transfer and access points gives Maxtor a 5.54 combined performance rating, and Seagate a 4.61.
Noise was so great an issue during our test that we had to create a scale for it. We used a baseline of 20dB as "perfect 10" and 50dB as a worst-case scenario, subtracting 1 point for every three decibels each drive exceeded 20dB. Averaging Maxtor's idle and seek noise provides 31dB, offering the same courtesy to Seagate provides an average 26.5dB, for a noise score of Maxtor a 6.33, Seagate 7.83.
The best hard drive warranty available for Desktop drives belongs to Seagate, with five-year coverage being exemplary. Simply doubling that number gives this perfect warranty period a 10. Maxtor's more typical 3-year warranty gives them 6 out of 10 warranty points.
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