The Samsung Spinpoint F3 is over four years old and one of the oldest drives that we have included in our group tests. The reason for its inclusion is that it was once one of the best hard drives available and we have seen more user benchmarks for this drive than any other. The price of this drive has fluctuated significantly over its epic four year life span and current prices do not reflect the great value for money that this drive once represented. In today's market the F3 struggles to keep up with the group leaders both in terms of performance and price. With an effective speed rating of 116 MB/s the F3 is one of the slowest 1TB drives in our group test. There are clearly newer and better alternatives available at this time. [Jan '14HDrivePro]
This is the most recent version (2013 FZEX) of Western Digital's best performing consumer storage drive, its predecessor was the WD1002FAEX which is now four years old. With average sequential read/write speeds of 150 MB/s this version outperforms its predecessor by a whopping 50%. Small file random 4K speeds have remained broadly unchanged with average read/write rates of 0.9/2.19 MB/s. Overall the 2013 WD Black has a very good performance profile and it also represents reasonable value for money, at least in the 1TB category. There are some good alternatives to the 2013 Black including the 2012 Blue. Looking at the 2013 Black vs 2012 Blue shows that both drives have similar performance. Power consumption (6.8/6.1 Watts active/idle) and noise levels (29.5 dBA) are also identical making it a tough call between the two. There is however, as always, better value amongst the larger capacities. [Feb '14HDrivePro]
We calculate effective speed which measures performance for typical consumers. Effective speed is adjusted by current cost per GB to yield value for money. Our calculated values are checked against thousands of individual user ratings. The customizable table below combines these factors to bring you the definitive list of top HDDs. [HDrivePro]
Welcome to our PC speed test tool. UserBenchmark will test your PC and compare the results to other users with the same components. You can quickly size up your PC, identify hardware problems and explore the best value for money upgrades.