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Conclusion
WinBench 99 2.0 has proven that it can still serve as a consistent and reliable hard disk drive benchmark even in Windows Vista. It has given us a lot of interesting data. If the Business and High-End simulations were not good enough, the raw transfer rate results were certainly most useful. From the transfer rate results, you can see which hard disk drive or solid state drive has a higher transfer rate, and how areal density affects that performance metric.
It also shot down the perception that a newer model is always faster, or that a faster spindle speed would always result in better performance. You would think that a 7200 RPM hard disk drive would always be slower than a 10,000 RPM hard disk drive. But the 2 TB Western Digital Caviar Black and the Hitachi CinemaStar 7K1000.C proved that wrong when they both beat the 300 GB Western Digital VelociRaptor. The use of high density platters allowed the two 7200 RPM drives to beat even a hard disk drive with a much higher spindle speed.
Even in the mobile HDD category, slower 5400 RPM hard disk drives with high-density platters like the 500 GB WD Scorpio Blue Slim roundly knocked off "faster" competitors like the 500 GB WD Scorpio Black (BEKT), which not only runs at 7200 RPM but have a larger cache as well.
Then we have the platter transfer rate profiles which showed that the minimum and maximum transfer rates also do not tell the whole story. For example, the 2 TB Western Digital Caviar Black started out slower than the 600 GB Western Digital VelociRaptor, but because of its much higher capacity, it was better at sustaining its transfer rate. From the cross-over point at around 200 GB and thereafter, the Caviar Black hard disk drive was actually much faster than the VelociRaptor. This is why we should not just rely on pure benchmark numbers. We should also look at platter transfer profiles as they would give us a better idea of how hard disk drives perform across the entire range of their storage capacity.
Here is a summary of the fastest desktop and mobile hard disk drives in the different tests we ran. However, you should never buy hard disk drives based merely on a simple summary like this, or even on their performance characteristics. There are other factors to consider like storage capacity, power consumption, thermal output and warranty. It's best to read up on the full reviews before deciding on the best HDD for your needs.
Benchmarks |
Best Desktop HDD |
Best Mobile HDD |
Business Disk WinMark 99 |
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High-End Disk WinMark 99 |
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Maximum Surface Temperature |
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Transfer Rate Range |
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4 KB Random Access |
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4 KB Sequential Access |
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512 KB Random Access |
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512 KB Sequential Access |
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Now that we have 55 hard disk drives in this comparison, we are really getting somewhere. We will continuously improve on this comparison by adding more hard disk drives. However, this depends greatly on our resources which are limited to begin with. So, if you have a hard disk drive you no longer use, you can help us by loaning or donating it to us for our tests. 
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Details & Settings |
• Introduction |
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| Real World Simulations | ||
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Synthetic Tests |
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Conclusion |
Questions & Comments
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| Date | Revision | Revision History |
| 18-11-2015 | 5.7 | Added the 6 TB Western Digital Black (WD6001FZWX) desktop hard disk drive. |
| 08-04-2015 | 5.6 | Added the 6 TB Western Digital Green (WD60EZRX) desktop hard disk drive. |
| 17-12-2014 | 5.5 | Added the 6 TB Western Digital Red (WD60EFRX) NAS hard disk drive. |
| 28-11-2014 | 5.4 | Added the 4 TB Western Digital Red Pro (WD4001FFSX) NAS hard disk drive. |
| 07-07-2014 | 5.3 | Added the 1 TB Seagate Laptop SSHD (ST1000UM000) mobile hard disk drive. |
| 02-04-2014 | 5.2 | Added the 1 TB Western Digital Black² (WD1001X06XDTL) mobile hard disk drive. |
| 11-02-2014 | 5.1 | Added the 4 TB Western Digital Black (WD4003FZEX) desktop hard disk drive. |
| 06-12-2013 | 5.0 | Major revamp of the guide, compressing it into just 7 pages. |
| 08-02-2013 | 4.9 | Added the 4 TB Western Digital RE (WD4000FYYZ) enterprise hard disk drive. |
| 16-08-2012 | 4.8 | Added the 1 TB Western Digital VelociRaptor (WD1000DHTZ) enterprise hard disk drive. |
| 25-10-2011 | 4.7 | Added the 2 TB Western Digital Caviar Green Gen. 2 (WD20EARX) desktop hard disk drive. |
| 20-09-2011 | 4.6 | Added the 2 TB Samsung EcoGreen F4 (HD204UI) desktop hard disk drive. |
| 21-07-2010 | 4.5 | Added the 3 TB Western Digital AV-GP AFT (WD30EURS) CE hard disk drive. |
| 23-06-2010 | 4.4 | Retested all the hard disk drives using WinBench. |
| 22-11-2010 | 4.3 | Added a new Maximum Surface Temperature section. |
| 16-09-2010 | 4.2 | Added the 1.5 TB Samsung EcoGreen F2 desktop hard disk drive. |
| 03-08-2010 | 4.1 | Added the 600 GB Western Digital VelociRaptor enterprise hard disk drive. |
| 14-07-2010 | 4.0 | Added brand-new Top 5 summaries for all benchmark results. |
| 13-05-2010 | 3.5 | Added the 2 TB Western Digital Caviar Black desktop hard disk drive. |
| 21-04-2010 | 3.4 | Added the 1 TB Western Digital Caviar Black desktop hard disk drive. |
| 09-03-2010 | 3.3 | Added the 2 TB Western Digital RE4-GP enterprise hard disk drive. |
| 13-11-2009 | 3.2 | Added the 1 GB Samsung Spinpoint F1 (HD103UJ) desktop hard disk drive. |
| 01-10-2009 | 3.1 | Added the 128 GB SuperTalent UltraDrive GX and 80 GB Intel X25-M (50 nm) solid state drives for comparison purposes. |
| 11-06-2009 | 3.0 | Added four new pages of benchmark results based on IO Meter. |
| 18-04-2009 | 2.0 | Added the 2 TB Western Digital Caviar Green desktop hard disk drive. |
| 17-10-2008 | 1.7 | Added the 300 GB Western Digital VelociRaptor enterprise hard disk drive. |
| 18-07-2008 | 1.6 | Added the 150 GB Western Digital Raptor X enterprise hard disk drive. |
| 17-05-2008 | 1.5 | Added the 1 TB Western Digital Caviar GP desktop hard disk drive. |
| 24-04-2008 | 1.4 | Added the 500 GB Western Digital Caviar GP desktop hard disk drive. |
| 10-03-2008 | 1.3 | Added the 750 GB Seagate Barracuda ES enterprise hard disk drive. |
| 25-02-2008 | 1.2 | Added the 160 GB Seagate Momentus 5400.3 mobile hard disk drive. |
| 19-02-2008 | 1.1 | Added the 100 GB Seagate Momentus 7200.1 mobile hard disk drive. |
| 15-02-2008 | 1.0 | Initial release. |
