Performance

USB 2.0

A Samsung T133 300GB 8MB cache 7200RPM drive was used for our performance tests.


The USB interface is quite constant and even increases slightly toward the end just before dropping below 30MB/s. The average read speed is around 34MB/s.


This image shows how the hard drive behaves when hooked up directly to the IDE channel compared to the USB speed achieved. As you can see, the dip toward the end when connected to the USB is forced by the slow outer read speed of the Samsung drive. Overall the USB transfer speed is faster than the Thermaltake Muse LanDisk we reviewed here.


The ATTO Disk Benchmark gives us the same results as HD Tach. The X-Craft maxes out at just under 35MB/s.

Firewire

The actual performance with Firewire is around 3MB/s faster than USB 2.0. The CPU utilization went down from 14% to a mere 1%.


The ATTO scores show a large jump in read speed, while the write speed is slower than when connected with USB.