Seagate 120GB External Storage
by Purav Sanghani on September 29, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Final Thoughts
There really isn't a huge performance difference in these two drives when we look at the real world file system tests. The greatest differences, as small as they are, lay in the synthetic test results. Since the bottleneck of these external drives is the interface with which they communicate, USB 2.0 in the case of both drives in this comparison, there shouldn't be much of a performance difference.
However, we saw that the results of WinBench 99's Transfer Rate test and HDTach's Sequential read test show lower transfer and read speeds with the Seagate drive compared to the E5. The Disk Access time was also 1.8ms slower than the E5, at 15ms.
The 120GB Seagate drive is geared more towards those who just want to easily add a small amount of disk space to their systems. For daily backups and standard archival, any USB or FireWire based drive is a great addition to your desktop environment and Seagate creates a decent, stackable product with simple features that will appeal to all types of users.
Seagate's other external drives include FireWire and push button backup capabilities with capacities currently up to 400GB. The 120GB version comes at a cost in the sub-$100 range while the 300GB version, which has the Firewire interface along with the USB 2.0 interface, as well as the single button backup, runs between $200-$250 on average at most places. The 320GB E5 is seen as low as $222 at some online retailers and it features both Push Button backup as well as the FireWire 400 interface. Depending on your daily needs, the prices are at about the same level for the drive capacity and features they offer.
There really isn't a huge performance difference in these two drives when we look at the real world file system tests. The greatest differences, as small as they are, lay in the synthetic test results. Since the bottleneck of these external drives is the interface with which they communicate, USB 2.0 in the case of both drives in this comparison, there shouldn't be much of a performance difference.
However, we saw that the results of WinBench 99's Transfer Rate test and HDTach's Sequential read test show lower transfer and read speeds with the Seagate drive compared to the E5. The Disk Access time was also 1.8ms slower than the E5, at 15ms.
The 120GB Seagate drive is geared more towards those who just want to easily add a small amount of disk space to their systems. For daily backups and standard archival, any USB or FireWire based drive is a great addition to your desktop environment and Seagate creates a decent, stackable product with simple features that will appeal to all types of users.
Seagate's other external drives include FireWire and push button backup capabilities with capacities currently up to 400GB. The 120GB version comes at a cost in the sub-$100 range while the 300GB version, which has the Firewire interface along with the USB 2.0 interface, as well as the single button backup, runs between $200-$250 on average at most places. The 320GB E5 is seen as low as $222 at some online retailers and it features both Push Button backup as well as the FireWire 400 interface. Depending on your daily needs, the prices are at about the same level for the drive capacity and features they offer.
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foot167 - Thursday, September 29, 2005 - link
I just returned the 300GB model today after 3 weeks of use. Everything I read about them said they were terrible but I had to give them a shot anyway. Sometimes my computer wouldn't recognize the drive. it would say no drive there. then on monday the drive decided that it was unformatted and needed to be reformatted. good thing that i kept a copy of everything i put on the external on my internal drives.the 300gb one can be had for under $200 and even less after rebates.
How about some reliability tests on these drives. Does the firewire/usb interface affect the reliability of these drives? Are they prone to crashing for some reason?
ScottyDog - Friday, September 30, 2005 - link
I agree with your comments about reliability with these external drives. I have one and have the same problems with the disk suddenly becoming "unformatted". I have done a google search and this is a huge problem with these external USB or Firewire chipsets whether they are are the Oxford or Prolific flavors.Somebody really needs to do an article about what is going on here as I have resorted to leaving my drive off unless I am doing a backup and then need to restore otherwise all my data gets destroyed.
I originally thought it might be due to write caching and changing it to safe mode but it makes no difference with mine. If I leave it on eventually it becomes "Unformatted".
type this into google and you will see this is a wide spread problem with these external drives: windows delayed write failure
Googer - Thursday, September 29, 2005 - link
Dosen't it have 1394? I won't buy an External HDD with out 1394a and/or 1394b.MASCARNHAS - Monday, June 21, 2010 - link
I've used Report and although its great, I've had better luck with WheresTheFreeSpace. It is Modeled after a PC application that is very popular called <a href="http://www.wheresthefreespace.com">Treesiz... (but its for Mac).</a>