300 GB Maxtor One Touch II, 16MB buffer - FireWire v. USB2.0

[AMD Die Hard]

I deceided to get a Maxtor One Touch 300 GB externaml hard drive.

This thing can handle either USB 2.0 or 1394 Fire Wire. So, to satisfy my own curiusity, I decided to benchmark the drive using HDTach.

When I tested the drive with USB 2.0 on my Neo2's integrated port, I averaged 29.6 MB/sec with a CPU utilization of 8% and average read of 28.1.

When I switched to the integrated firewire port on my Neo2 I averaged 41.5 MB/sec with a CPU utlization of 2% and an average read of 39.6 MB/sec. A 33% increase using Fire wire over USB 2.0. I knew that firewire was faster despite having a lower theoretical bandwidth (480 MB/s for USB 2.0 and 400 MB/s for firewire), but this exceeded my expectations.

I also tested the drive on the firewire port integrated on my Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer. It was interesting that with the Audigy Gamer I averaged 42.7 MB/sec with a CPU utilization of 2% and an average read of 40.7. That is an additional 3% speed increase for the Sound Blater Audigy (not Audigy 2) firewire over the MSI integrated firewire.

I can only assume that there is some sort of driver maturity that allowed the Sound Blaster to edge out the MSI for firewire transfer. Anyone else have any theories?

 

[Alostdog]

What software did you use for benchmarking?

 

[AMD Die Hard]

I used HDTach v. 3.0.1.0. I used the "short test" for all these comparisons.

 

[pm]

Interesting. Thanks for posting the results. That's a wider spread than I would have expected.

 

[biostud]

I run my Maxtor on SB Audigy Firewire.

 

[fbrdphreak]

Repost this in General Hardware and/or Peripherals too, a lot of ppl would be intereted in this :thumbsup:

 

[AMD Die Hard]

Originally posted by: fbrdphreak
Repost this in General Hardware and/or Peripherals too, a lot of ppl would be intereted in this :thumbsup:

I originally posted this in General Hardware, but there were so many new posts, that this wound up on page 3 before there were 20 reads - thats why I posted it here. I will re-post it in peripherals though. I found this so interesting that I was surprised I got no feedback on the General hardware forum. Also intersting, see my new post about SATA 150 RAID 1 performance v. ATA 133 RAID 0,1 performance.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

I've been thinking about picking up an external hdd for my lab, so this is welcome data. Good numbers - thanks for the post!

 

[Tarrant64]

Great post! I've been starring at external hdd's for a couple weeks now. deciding what i'm gonna buy. this will be bookmarked for later.

thanks!