With peak sequential read/write speeds of 140 and averages of 120 MB/s the 3TB WD Red is around 25% slower than the group leaders. If the Red is used in a NAS (Network Attached Storage), that won't make much difference because the vast majority of home networks still operate at Fast Ethernet (~10 MB/s), even users with faster Gigabit (~100 MB/s) networks will be limited by their network bandwidth before the drive. I could assume that any of our drives are for use in a NAS but that of course doesn't excuse sub-par performance because they could equally be used in a desktop. It's true that the power consumption (4.4W) on the Red is lower than average (6W) but the performance hit isn't justified. Even assuming continuous usage, those extra couple of watts for something like the Seagate Baracuda 7200.14 amount to a few pounds a year at most. At £133 this dive is both overpriced and offers sub-optimal performance. [Feb '14HDrivePro]
The 2TB Toshiba DT01ACA200 is a 3.5" desktop hard drive. This model sports a rotation speed of 7,200 RPM and is reasonably power efficient for a 2TB desktop drive consuming just 6.4 Watts when loaded and 5.2 Watts when idle. The DT01ACA200 has impressive performance with peak sequential read/write speeds of 193/182 MB/s and peak 4k read/write speeds of 1.16/2.28 MBps. These raw figures produce an effective speed of 141 MBps which ranks the 2TB DT01ACA200 amongst the top handful of 2TB hard drives. Not only is the 2TB DT01ACA200 a great performer but it is also priced aggressively and therefore represents superb value for money for a 2TB capacity drive. Comparing the 2TB and 3TB versions shows that performance is very similar but the 3TB offers 50% more capacity for just 25% more cash which makes the difference between good and great value for money. [Nov '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.