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.



With a time of 26.6 seconds to write our 1.6GB ISO file pattern the 2TB Caviar is some way from being the fastest mechanical drive we've tested and is a good 20 percent slower than the Samsung 1TB. It's clear that despite the large 500GB platter size the limited spindle speed is holding the drive's performance back.


Copy results for our larger ISO file pattern are also somewhat disappointing and are about the same as those of the single patter 250GB Seagate drive with half the drive density.


Reading the 1.6GB of large files is the biggest disappointment though, with the monster 2TB Caviar Green taking a 17.4 seconds to read the pattern, slower than any other large capacity hard disk we've tested so far, 18 percent slower than the Samsung 1TB and over 30 percent slower than the Seagate 1.5TB 7200.11 drive.