Next: HD Tune

HD Tune is used to measure and graph the total drive throughput, going from the start (outside) of the platters to the end (inside). So the beginning of the test should be the drive’s maximum speed and the end will be its lowest speed, this is represented by the blue line measuring Megabytes per second. Seek/access times are also measured by HD Tune, again going from the outer to the inner edges of the platters. The access time test measures how long it takes the head to go from its idle position at the outer edge of the disc to find a particular track on the disc/platter. This is represented by the yellow cloud of dots.

HDTune: Western Digital Scorpio 250GB

HDTune: Western Digital Scorpio 160GB

HDTune: Seagate Momentus 160GB

From the above results we see the new 250GB Western Digital is well ahead of the old 160GB version, and surprisingly comes very close to the speed of the Seagate in terms of its throughput speed, but lags well behind in regards to its access time. This helps also to explain the PCMark05 results, where the 250GB Western Digital was close to the Seagate in the tests involving large data transfers, such as the file write test, but lagged behind in the tests involving far more random access, such as the virus scan.

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