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Page 4 of 5 Next: HD Tune Benchmark The HD Tune benchmark tests the transfer rate across the entire face of the disc platters, starting from the outside and working in (speed shown by blue line). The access times are also tested at each point, and measures the time taken for the heads to get from their idle position at the outside of the platter/disc, to seek to the desired position, this time will increase as the test moves further towards the inside of the platters (shown by the yellow dots). Firstly, the Western Digital 250GB (WD2500JS)  Second, the Western Digital 400GB (WD4000AAKS)  Finally, the Seagate 400GB (ST3400620AS)  From the above images, we see that the performance of both Western Digital hard drives starts to fall at a predictable rate straight away, whereas the Seagate drive plateau’s at the beginning and only starts to fall off around the 50% mark. All things being equal between the drives, this shouldn’t happen, the Seagate should fall off from the start just like the Western Digital, this is possibly a limitation of the circuitry on the Seagate drive not being able to process the data at the desired speed. Both drives have a similar speed at the 100% mark of the test, with the Seagate having an ever so slightly better access time according to this test, but overall the Western Digital 400GB drive has shown itself to be the much faster drive in terms of its overall transfer rate.
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