FC-Test Results

Website: FC-Test

Our FC-Test benchmark is split into three parts. First is a write test involving the creation of a file pattern similar to common files such as MP3s or large video files. Once created on the drive, we then copy the file pattern from the drive back to a different folder on the same drive producing a combined read/write test. Finally we test the read speed of the drive by performing FC-Test's read test of 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 drive, and can be interpreted as as close to a real world file transfer test as possible.


The Seagate 1.5TB's write speed is superb for a mechanical drive and clearly betters the Samsung 1TB drive. In fact, bar the ludicrously expensive Intel X25-E, it's the fastest hard disk for writing large groups of small files we've ever tested!


Sadly combined read/write performance isn't as good though, and the Seagate 1.5 loses out to the Samsung by 1.5 seconds - a comparative drop of almost twenty percent. While this is still an improvement over the 1TB Seagate drive, it's a bit disappointing considering the excellent write speed, and it's likely that the slow response time is the culprit. With the drive heads having to perform thousands of read/write actions during the test, that 2.5ms dip in speed in comparison to the Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB has a big effect.


And the Seagate 1.5TB's read times for FC-Test's 0.99 GB MP3 file pattern were similarly disappointing, matching those of the Seagate 1TB and a second slower than the Samsung - a comparative drop of almost sixteen percent.