Real World Tests – File System Performance (cont’d)

File Zip Operations

File Zip – One 300MB File, seconds, lower is better
Within Drive To Drive (From SATA)
AcomData E5 320GB (USB) 69.195 70.734
AcomData E5 320GB (FireWire 400) 67.219 67.586
Seagate 120GB USB 67.688 67.443

File Zip – Three Hundred 1MB Files, seconds, lower is better
Within Drive To Drive (From SATA)
AcomData E5 320GB (USB) 71.775 71.621
AcomData E5 320GB (FireWire 400) 70.583 70.620
Seagate 120GB USB 68.906 70.805

Here, we see a greater difference in performance as the Seagate drive performs the File Zip operations one to two seconds quicker than the USB interface of the E5. Though this is not saying much, the difference does exist.

File UnZip Operations

File Unzip – One 300MB File, seconds, lower is better
Within Drive To Drive (From SATA)
AcomData E5 320GB (USB) 15.761 15.699
AcomData E5 320GB (FireWire 400) 14.427 14.401
Seagate 120GB USB 15.476 15.485

File Unzip – Three Hundred 1MB Files, seconds, lower is better
Within Drive To Drive (From SATA)
AcomData E5 320GB (USB) 16.196 16.008
AcomData E5 320GB (FireWire 400) 14.901 14.995
Seagate 120GB USB 15.664 15.618

The E5 performs the same across our File Unzip tests, unzipping both sizes of volume in 14-16 seconds.

Real World Tests – File System Performance Real World Tests – Multitasking Performance
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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>

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