Seagate FreeAgent Go 160 GB
(ST9016031E1-RK)
Performance tests
We'll compare our model under review with some other storage drives and enclosures for 2.5" hard drives:
We tested Seagate FreeAgent Go with both Windows cache settings (cached and quick removal) with the default NTFS file system.
We have run our tests on the following testbed:
- CPU: Intel Pentium 4 3.0C
- Motherboard: ABIT IC7-G on i875P chipset
- RAM: 2x256 MB DDR400 (2.5-3-3-6 timings)
- Video card: Matrox Millennium G400
- Main hard disk: Seagate Barracuda SATA V
- Power supply: Zalman ZM400A-APF, 400W
Hard drives were connected to USB 2.0 and FireWire controllers on this motherboard. The tests were carried out under MS Windows XP Professional SP1. We'll again analyze primitive performance characteristics of our contenders (buffered, linear, and random access rates), as well as pay attention to practical (real) aspects of external drives, because the above mentioned characteristics cannot give an adequate picture of the real day-to-day situation (running applications, writing data, reading and copying files, etc) with hard drives from various manufacturers with various characteristics and most importantly with various firmware algorithms.
Let's proceed to test results.
The average access time of Seagate FreeAgent Go matches that of the hard drive inside. It's one of the best results among its counterparts - storage drives with Seagate models are leaders here (including Maxtor OneTouch III Mini).
Interface transfer rates of Hi-Speed USB is rather high, but they do not break any records. According to HD Tach 3.0.1.0, the interface transfer rate of this model is about 33 Mbytes/s. WinBench 99 shows the transfer rate of 32.5 Mbytes/s (see the graph below).
Linear read rates in WinBench 99 for this and other contenders are published below. So we can draw a conclusion that this storage drive offers a decent linear read rate, although it does not break any records.
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Seagate FreeAgent Go 160GB
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WD Passport 120 GB
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Seagate Portable 100 GB USB 2.0
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Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition
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LaCie Brick Mobile HD 80 GB,
USB 2.0
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LaCie Brick Mobile HD 80 GB,
FireWire
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AgeStar IUB2O1 USB 2.0
with Seagate ST9100823A
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Truewin NS2601 USB 2.0
with Seagate ST9100823A
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The multi-threaded write test in NBench, averaged by our traditional patterns (from one to four threads) shows that Seagate FreeAgent Go 160GB offers one of the best results among USB storage drives.
Windows caching does not affect this result in case of NTFS.
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