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 on 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.


Following the disappointing theoretical tests we started our more real-world tests apprehensively, but the the 2TB Caviar Green didn't perform as poorly as we'd expected, writing our 0.99GB MP3 file pattern in 16.6 seconds. While this is three seconds slower than the fastest large capacity mechanical drive, the Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB, it's a full 5.5 seconds faster than the 250GB Seagate, so clearly the platter density is playing a part here in testing that's more representative of real world use, although the limited spindle speed is still holding performance back.


Again, the 2TB Caviar Green fails to impress with an unimpressive copy time of 10.54 seconds - almost 40 percent slower than the Samsung Spinpoint F1. While this is still faster than many of the recent crop of SSDs, it's a disappointing result for a mechanical drive.


Despite the disappointing 79MB/s theoretical read speed there isn't too much between the 2TB Caviar Green and the Samsung 1TB drive here with just 0.7 seconds between the two drives.