How come my 160gb drive is slower the my 500gb?

Phil2008

Phil2008

Phil2008

Soldato
Joined
17 Dec 2004
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Bought this drive abought 6weeks ago to use as my boot drive and its slower then my 500gb drive but there both the same make of drive.(see in sig for details)

160gbhx8.jpg


500gbzc5.jpg
 
From my understanding, the 160gb is 1 platter of 160gb, the 500gb is 3 x 166gb platters, and hence the 500gb has higher density platters it should be faster...but only 6gb shouldnt really make much of a difference...thats just my understanding so i may be wrong and it might not be the reason :p
 
A2Z said:
From my understanding, the 160gb is 1 platter of 160gb, the 500gb is 3 x 166gb platters, and hence the 500gb has higher density platters it should be faster...but only 6gb shouldnt really make much of a difference...thats just my understanding so i may be wrong and it might not be the reason :p
Click to expand...

Right idea, but could be 2x80gb platters hence a much lower density.
 
No, the AAJS is a single platter.

It should be about the same speed as the 5000AAKS but I'm struggling to think why it isn't.

<Wanders off to look at the benchmark thread>
 
Any ideas yet guys?? The only idea ive got is cos im using the 160gb as my windows drive. Like ive run hdd tune a few times but it wont go passed the 72mb/s mark
 
Craig321 said:
They're different drives. Ones single platter the other isn't. One's the AAJS series, the other is the AAKS series.
Click to expand...
Yes and the AAJS is the single platter version of the AAKS so the speeds should be the same since they use the same platter as far as I'm aware.
 
Doesn't a disk with multiple platters read down through the platters? This could explain the differences but TBH there's not much in it between the 2 so doubt that you'd notice it in everyday use.
 
IAmATeaf said:
Doesn't a disk with multiple platters read down through the platters?
Click to expand...
Yes it does so disks with 1, 2 or 3 identical platters should have the same maximum, minimum and average transfer rates. All that differs is that the fastest (and consequently slowest) x% of the disk is 3 times larger on the 3 platter drive than the single platter one.
 
Perhaps it's like their current single platter oens where one is marketed to OEM's and lowend use so it's a bit limited for more reliability (or they use speed binned parts).
 
checked toms

I checked these on toms and the 5000 is generally outperformed by the 1600. However the 1600 has 8mb of cache and the 5000 has 16mb. Perhaps that makes a difference (cant see it making 13MB/sec difference though).
 
Here goes, my 2p:
- Having Windows installed might make the drive slower due to more files and more fragmentation.
- If a drive has 3 platters the files can be spread on different platters meaning the head can travel faster from file to file than a single platter?
- Not all drives are equal, the firmware can be different
- Maybe S.M.A.R.T. is enabled on one drive and not the other?
- Maybe acoustic management is enabled making the drive a little slower but a little quieter?

Actually it was more 30p than 2p :p
 
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