Western Digital Red Pro WD4001FFSX 4TB Review (Page 8 of 11)

Page 8 - Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 8.0

About PassMark PerformanceTest 8.0

This Advanced Disk Test, which is part of PerformanceTest, measures the data transfer speed when reading or writing data to one or more disks. The speed that data can be transferred between memory and a hard disk drive is one of a system's most important performance aspects. There are quite a few factors which have a bearing on this speed and the Advanced Disk Drive Test allows the user to vary most of these factors and compare the results.

The test supports any drive that can be mounted under Windows. Including IDE drives, SCSI, RAID, USB key drives, SATA, networked shared drives and external drives.

Users have the ability to test multiple drives at the same time using multiple threads, and specify:

- The size of the test file used. Larger files mean that the system cache has less of an effect on the test types, which use caching (see below).
- The size of the data block used for each read or write request. Larger blocks mean less requests and can lead to an improvement in performance.
- The choice of four access methods - C/C++ API, Win32 API cached / uncached and raw disk access.
- Sequential or random access (seeking plus reading and writing)
- Synchronous and Asynchronous access
- The split between reading and writing

The results of all completed tests may be graphed using our custom graphing components.

From: Developer's Page




PassMark PerformanceTest 8.0's Advanced Disk Test, unlike HD Tune Pro 4.60, generates some awesome graphs right out of the box. It also provides valuable insight in simulating real world performance applications. To make things clear to you, the first graph simulates a database server, followed by a file server, web server, and workstation. Drives with high sequential read and write performance will do well in PassMark PerformanceTest 8.0. However, it also requires high IOPS capabilities for the best score, and as such, results for these NAS oriented hard disk drives will prove to be very relevant. In the first test simulating a database server, the Western Digital Red Pro WD4001FFSX 4TB simply blew the competition out of the water at 1.03MB/s average. The Western Digital Red WD40EFRX 4TB came in second place with 0.80MB/s average, compared to 0.71MB/s for the Hitachi and 0.39MB/s for the Seagate. The same deal went for the file server performance simulation. The WD Red Pro took the big lead at 8.06MB/s, followed by the WD Red at 5.78MB/s, Hitachi third at 4.55MB/s, and Seagate fourth at 3.95MB/s. In fact, the WD4001FFSX continued to take the crown as we move on to the web server simulation -- coming in at 9.11MB/s; compared to 7.47MB/s for the WD40EFRX, 6.98MB/s for the Deskstar NAS, and 4.39MB/s for the ST4000VN000. Is there a test in PassMark PerformanceTest 8.0 that the Western Digital Red Pro did not win? Well, it will have to be the workstation test -- where it was trailing behind the HGST's 3.06MB/s at 2.98MB/s, but this is it. Being a NAS oriented drive and all, the Red Pro won all three server simulations by quite a sizable margin. I do not know about you, but I think it is taking home the crown in all the right areas.


Page Index
1. Introduction, Features, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Installation, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark
5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 3.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tach 3.0.1.0
7. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 4.60
8. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 8.0
9. Benchmark: PCMark 7
10. NAS Performance, Power Consumption
11. Conclusion