FC-Test Results

Website: FC-Test

Our FC-Test benchmark is split into four parts. The creation time of a file pattern similar to a commonly transferred batch of files such as MP3s or large video files. Once created on the drive, we then time the transfer from the drive to the C:\ drive, and then time the transfer back from the C:\ to the external drive. Finally, we test the read speed of the drive by performing FC-Test's read test of the the files copied.

For our benchmarks, we're using both the MP3 pattern, consisting of two hundred and seventy small files totalling 0.99GB, and the the ISO pattern, consisting of three large files totalling 1.6GB in size. We feel these file patterns represent the most common files people will be frequently copying to and from an external drive, and can be interpreted as as close to a real world file transfer test as possible.









The advantage of using eSATA over USB 2.0 and Firewire is obvious - it's in some cases up to three times faster than USB 2.0. In fact, because our boot drive is only a 160GB 7200.9 Seagate disk in comparison to the FreeAgent|XTreme's quad platter 1TB 7200.11 drive, it's likely that the copy to C:\ and copy from C:\ tests are being limited by our boot disk rather than the FreeAgent - it's just that fast!

Firewire 400 performance is exactly where we expected, being noticeably faster than the more popular USB 2.0 by up to thirty percent, so it's certainly worth using Firewire 400 over USB 2.0 if you have the ability.