Surface Temperature

We monitored the surface temperature of the external hard disk drives during their benchmarks. The following chart shows their operating temperature range, from idle to maximum load. Please note that instead of giving you the absolute numbers, we are showing the temperature delta, which is the difference between the actual temperature and the ambient room temperature.

The 640 GB My Passport Studio drive tied with the 500 GB Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex and the 160 GB My Passport as the coolest external drives while idling. However, it edged out the other drives at full load. While the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex managed a very respectable 10.6 °C above ambient temperature, the Western Digital My Passport Studio 640 GB drive beat that by registering a maximum case temperature of only 7.8 °C above ambient temperature!

Platter Transfer Rate Profile

We did not have a FireWire 800 port so we could only test its FireWire 400 performance. Still, it managed a very good throughput of just over 40 MB/s while using the FireWire interface. Even its USB 2.0 performance was good at just below 35 MB/s.

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