Sisoft Sandra 2007

To confirm the HD Tach findings, I also ran the hard drive benchmark provided with the SiSoft Sandra 2007 suite of hardware tests. SiSoft Sandra has one hard drive test, a read test with a similar display to HD Tach’s Sequential Read Speed display:


SiSoft Sandra Test Results

As you can see from this chart, the results over time are pretty similar to the ones reached by HD Tach, suggesting that the connecting hardware is slowing down the transfer speeds between the drive and the motherboard. In the case of this test rig, I believe it’s the controller slowing things down instead of a below-average hard drive because of the age of the SATA controller; add better hardware and you’ll get a better transfer speed from the hard drive. It’s something to keep in mind if you’re planning on adding a new hard drive to an aging computer.

iTunes 6.0.5

To do a speed test, I fired up iTunes to try some CD ripping. My Pioneer DVD-115 reads CDs at 40x (respectable when I purchased it some six years ago) and I’m eager to take advantage of the 7200.10’s massive capacity and turn my PC into the centerpiece of a digital entertainment system. Popping in Metallica’s Load (which, besides the irony of using Metallica for a CD ripping test happens to be a 78 minute and 57 second CD, about as long as you can go), I set iTunes to rip to mp3 at 320 kbps and let things run. According to iTunes, the rip speed averaged around 13.3x and the rip itself took 5 minutes and 57 seconds; not bad for an mp3 of such high quality.