Samsung Spinpoint HD203WI 2TB HDD review - HDD Performance PCMark Vantage HDD

PCMark Vantage HDD test suite

PCMark vantage has a very good test suite to benchmark storage performance. The software looks at things you normally do with your PC and tries to measure what kind of an effect that has on your user experience by testing eight different segments stressing the storage unit.

• HDD1 - Spyware is very common on systems without protection against it, letting Windows Defender scan & protect your system is recommended.
• HDD2 - Streaming data from an HDD in games allows for massive worlds and riveting non-stop action.
• HDD3 - Importing digital photos to Windows Photo Gallery is where a high performance HDD shines.
• HDD4 - Starting Windows Vista is a rather demanding task for the storage device, but a fast HDD will notably decrease the loading time.

The tests include a series of reads, writes and copies under a set of specific conditions and applications.

Now first off have a very good look at the traditional HDD drive all the way at the bottom. OMG they are totally trashed by the most modern SSD drives.

We feel that the PCMark Vantage HDD test is the best indicator of real world operating system performance, due to the high access times on the Samsung, it will show very average performance.

And yes .. with 0,1ms access times, fast controller and NAND Flash any modern SSD with a little cache memory will dominate here.

Let's fire up the second round of real-world performance tests:

• HDD5 - Home video editing with Windows Movie Maker can be very time-consuming – unless you have a high performance HDD.
• HDD6 - Windows Media Center with a high performance HDD can handle simultaneous video recording, time-shifting, and streaming to an Extender for Windows Media Center, such as Xbox 360™.
• HDD7 - Cataloguing your music library is a breeze for fast and powerful HDDs.
• HDD8 - Starting various applications can take a long time – unless you have a high performance HDD.

In the past, with test 5 (video editing) and test 6 (MCE) we noticed the traditional mechanical Raptor drive lead the pack over the other HDDs, but sure the Samsung Spinpoint does not perform bad at all, no Sir.  Of course again an SSD trashes and dominates.