ST1000LM024 vs ST9500420AS

[fidelity101]

I recently purchased an ASUS G75 from Best Buy and I'm preparing to upgrade the primary drive to an SSD drive. I have an older 500GB 7200rpm drive, which is about 2 years old and I have the original 1TB 5400rpm drive that came with the ASUS.

The problem I'm having is that the 500GB 7200rpm drive "SHOULD" be much faster...but it's about 50% slower. I looked at the specs for each drive and the 7200rpm drive is also Sata 3.0GB, 16MB cache vs 8MB on the 5400rpm drive, and obviously a faster speed...so why is it slower?

ASUS Drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152291

Older Seagate drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148374


Comparison test using the read only feature of HD Speed with the following log file.

[Test Start 3/8/2013 8:07:59 AM] drive: \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0 start_offset: 0 mode: Read blocksize: Auto type: burst parallel: 1
blocksize: 64KB
result: 148480KB/s offset: 0% 0KB
result: 147840KB/s offset: 0% 0KB
result: 148992KB/s offset: 0% 0KB
[Test Stop 3/8/2013 8:08:29 AM] errors: 0 average: 142.8 M
[Test Start 3/8/2013 8:08:36 AM] drive: \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 start_offset: 0 mode: Read blocksize: Auto type: burst parallel: 1
blocksize: 64KB
result: 93568KB/s offset: 0% 0KB
result: 92800KB/s offset: 0% 0KB
result: 91520KB/s offset: 0% 0KB
result: 90752KB/s offset: 0% 0KB
[Test Stop 3/8/2013 8:09:06 AM] errors: 0 average: 89.2 M

 

[Dereck47]

The 1TB ST1000LM024 has maximum Read/Write speeds up to 145MB/s: http://www.seagate.com/files/staticfiles/support/docs/samsung-ds/100698122c.pdf

The 500GB ST9500420AS has maximum Read/Write speeds up to 123MB/s: http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/disc/manuals/notebook/momentus/7200.4%20(Holliday)/100534376a.pdf
(see page 3)

So the specs show the 500GB drive is actually slower, but I don't know why it 50% slower.

 

[ShadyHamster]

Is the 500GB drive near full, or is the 1TB drive near empty? that will have an effect on speed.
The 1TB drive being newer will have better firmware which helps with speed.
Also the platters in the 1TB drive im assuming will also be denser further increasing the speed some what.

 

[fidelity101]

The 1TB was 1/3 full and the 500GB Drive was empty. I recently purchased a Samsung 840 250GB drive, which is my new primary drive. The 1TB drive is now my secondary. The weird thing is that the 1TB drive, while primary, was around 142.8M in average read speeds. Now that it's my secondary, I'm getting the following results, which seem to be around 114M. This really has me confused as the ASUS G75VW motherboard or controllers must simply be faster for the primary vs. secondary drive? Or did I set the HDD information incorrectly in the BIOS? I recall there was a setting in BIOS for IDE or ... (forgot the name) and I used the non-IDE setting. I'll have to go back in the BIOS and see what the setting is and research if I'm possibly using the wrong settings. Also, I changed the drive from a basic drive to a dynamic drive...so maybe that did something?

[Test Start 3/15/2013 9:12:30 PM] drive: \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1 start_offset: 0 mode: Read blocksize: Auto type: sequential parallel: 1
blocksize: 64KB
result: 116736KB/s offset: 0% 58368KB
blocksize: 32KB
result: 114688KB/s offset: 0% 3041312KB
blocksize: 2048KB
result: 114688KB/s offset: 0% 3270688KB
result: 110592KB/s offset: 0% 3325984KB
blocksize: 1024KB
result: 114688KB/s offset: 0% 3383328KB
blocksize: 2048KB
result: 114688KB/s offset: 0% 3440672KB
[Test Stop 3/15/2013 9:13:01 PM] errors: 0 average: 111.3 M