Now we have the results provided by HD Tune program.

Here we saw the same thing we had seen with DiskSpeed32: Seagate drives achieved the highest burst transfer rates and Western Digital drives achieved the lowest, with Samsung between them. Keep in mind that the burst transfer rate measures the maximum transfer rate between the motherboard SATA port and the hard disk drive controller located on the drive itself, and may not represent real-world performance.

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 achieved a burst transfer rate 7% higher than Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 (ST31000333AS), 13% higher than Samsung Spinpoint F1 and 33% higher than Western Digital Caviar Black.

The most important figure for most people is the average transfer rate. Here the big champ was Seagate Barracuda 7200.12, which was 14% faster than Barracuda 7200.11 (ST31000333AS) and Samsung Spinpoint F1, 18% faster than Western Digital Caviar Black and 23% faster than Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 (ST31000340AS). Against “green” models it was 12% faster than Barracuda LP, 23% faster than Eco Green F2 and 38% faster than Caviar Green.

Among the “green” models, Barracuda LP was the fastest, being 10% faster than Samsung Eco Green F2 and 24% faster than Western Digital Caviar Green.

On the enterprise arena, Western Digital RE3 was 6% faster than Seagate Barracuda ES.2.

As explained before, the maximum transfer rate is achieved when the hard drive is reading data from its outer-most tracks.

Here Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 was the fastest drive, while Western Digital Caviar Green was the slowest. Barracuda 7200.12 achieved a maximum transfer rate 10% higher than Barracuda 7200.11 (ST31000333AS), 13% higher than Spinpoint F1 and 18% higher than Caviar Black.

As explained before, the minimum transfer rate is achieved when the hard drive is reading data from its inner-most tracks.

Barracuda 7200.12 was again the drive with the highest minimum transfer rate, while Caviar Green was the one with the lowest. Barracuda 7200.12 achieved a minimum transfer rate 16% higher than Samsung Spinpoint F1, 20% higher than Western Digital Caviar Black, 21% higher than Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 (ST31000333AS) and 24% higher than the other version of Barracuda 7200.11 we tested (ST31000340AS).