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The Maxtor drive is also a 7200 RPM drive with 8 MB cache. Its access time is 9.3 ms, so from specifications, it appears the Samsung should perform a bit better. The drives are blank. I am using Windows 2003 which is installed on another drive; therefore, OS activity accessing the drive is minimized.</p> <p align="left">First up, the Samsung drive tested with Sandra's file system benchmark.</p> <p align="center"><a href="atruereview/harddrive/SamsungSandra.gif"><img src="atruereview/harddrive/SamsungSandrath.gif" width="350" height="333" border="0" alt="Samsung SATA 120 GB Hard Drive"></a> <br> <font size="-1">Click on image for larger picture</font> </p> <p align="left">The performance looks okay, I really expected more with the access time. Let's find out how it stacks up versus the Maxtor SATA drive.</p> <p align="center"><a href="atruereview/harddrive/maxtorsandra.gif"><img src="atruereview/harddrive/maxtorsandrath.gif" width="350" height="333" border="0" alt="Samsung SATA 120 GB Hard Drive"></a> <br> <font size="-1">Click on image for larger picture</font> </p> <p align="left">Maxtor's drive has a faster read, whooping Samsung. The access time is great. Samsung's drive did post faster write times. </p> <p align="left">The problem with Sandra, is that I don't have a lot of options to test the drive. Therefore, I grabbed another program, <a href="http://www.passmark.com/">PassMark</a>. PassMark allows me to specify a lot of different settings with testing the drive.</p> <p align="left">The first settings were with a block size of 4MB. I ran a sequential 50/50 write/read. For the second run, I did what PassMark calls a Workgroup setting. It is a 80/20 random/sequential 70/30 read/write.</p> <p align="center"><img src="atruereview/harddrive/largeblock.gif" width="387" height="242" border="0" alt="Samsung SATA 120 GB Hard Drive"></p> <p align="left">Maxtor's SATA hard drive was again the winner with speed. I am starting to believe that the Maxtor drive will suit you better with speed.</p> <p align="left">The next test is with a smaller block size. I ran the same tests as above with a 32KB block size. A bunch of smaller files are always read and written slower. Normally, you will probably be reading and writing small files.</p> <p align="center"><img src="atruereview/harddrive/smallblock.gif" width="387" height="235" border="0" alt="Samsung SATA 120 GB Hard Drive"></p> <p align="left">Again, the Maxtor drive came out on top. This time increasing its lead on the Samsung.</p> <p align="left">One thought I had was that the Samsung might perform better with files on the drive. This would causing the head to move a bit on the drive instead of being near the inner track. That might help a drive with faster seeks times. Therefore, I put 40GB of data on each drive, and ran the Sandra test.</p> <p align="left">First up the Samsung.</p> <p align="center"><a href="atruereview/harddrive/SamsungSandra2.gif"><img src="atruereview/harddrive/SamsungSandra2th.gif" width="350" height="333" border="0" alt="Samsung SATA 120 GB Hard Drive"></a> <br> <font size="-1">Click on image for larger picture</font> </p> <p align="left">Looks like the Samsung improves a bit with more data on the drive. Maybe my theory is right.</p> <p align="left"></a> <a href="harddrive/">Next up, the Maxtor drive:</p> <p align="center"><a href="atruereview/harddrive/maxtorsandra2.gif"><img src="atruereview/harddrive/maxtorsandra2th.gif" width="350" height="333" border="0" alt="Samsung SATA 120 GB Hard Drive"></a> <br> <font size="-1">Click on image for larger picture</font> </p> <p align="left">According to the over all stat, Samsung finally won a category in the SATA drive wars. Looking at the break down, the Maxtor still presents itself as a quicker drive. I ran each test 3 times. For some reason, the top number was the same each time for the Samsung and Maxtor tests. Break down numbers varied by one or two MB/sec and I took the middle results.</p> <p align="left">Both drives are very quiet while running. This is important for those that want a quiet case. As for heat, I found the Samsung drive to be 2C cooler than the Maxtor drive; Samsung's first real advantage. I checked a couple of points on the outside of the drive to determine this, of course this isn't inside the drive where it counts. </p> <p align="left"> One more thing, Maxtor had about 3GB more space after the initial format. This is a big plus to Maxtor for we are buying space not only speed.</p> <p align="left"><strong>Conclusion:</strong></p> <p align="left">Even though the Maxtor had a stated slower access time, it flew. While I don't like Maxtor as much as Samsung, the drive was faster. If you are looking to improve your system performance, Maxtor's SATA drive is a quicker drive than Samsung's SATA. To really improve performance, always go with a RAID setup.</p> <p align="left">The reason I don't like Maxtor is because I have seen way too many fail for my taste. I have had a Samsung ATA 133 hard drive for over a year now and have had no issues. Only time will tell with both these SATA drives, for I have had them less than 3 weeks each. </p> <p align="left"><strong>Pros:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Quiet</li> <li>Runs cool</li> <li>Comes with SATA power adapter</li> </ul> <p align="left"><strong>Cons:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Slower than other drives</li> </ul> <p><strong>Ratings:</strong></p> <p>Good</p> <p>(Ratings Possible: Terrible, Very Bad, Bad, Fair, Good, Very Good, Excellent)</p> <p align="left"><a href="atruereview/harddrive/index.php"></a> <a href="harddrive/index.php">Previous (Introduction & Description)</a></p> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </div> <div id="footer" class="clr"> <div class="rk-1"> <div class="rk-2"> <div id="the-footer">  </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </body> </html>