Test System

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 (Supplied by Intel)

Motherboard: MSI X38 Diamond (Supplied by MSI Computer)

Memory: 2x 1GB DDR2-1200 (Supplied by Winchip)

Graphics Card: ASUS HD 3870 TOP (Supplied by ASUS)

Cooling: GIGABYTE 3D Galaxy II (Supplied by GIGABYTE)

Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate

Drivers: Intel INF 8.3.1.1009, ForceWare 163.21

The above setup is what will be used for all hard disk reviews hereon. Hard disks designed primarily for use in notebooks are also tested in the above system. However, some tests which are for determining the effect on battery life simply cannot be run on a desktop. All battery related tests are performed on a Lenovo T61 with WiFi enabled.

HD Tune Pro

Version and / or Patch Used: 3.00

Developer Homepage: http://www.efdsoftware.com/

Product Homepage: http://www.hdtune.com/>

HD Tune is a Hard Disk utility which has the following functions:

- Benchmark: measures the performance

- Info: shows detailed information

- Health: checks the health status by using SMART

- Error Scan: scans the surface for errors

- Temperature display

HD Tune Pro gives us accurate read, write and access time results and for the last couple of years has been gaining popularity amongst reviewers. It is now considered a must have application for storage device testing.

Read and Write Tests

Keeping with the Western Digital Raptor 150GB as a base for enthusiast drives, we find that the MemoRight GT in single drive and RAID 0 form is faster in all categories. When it comes to using the drives in RAID 0 we see a small dip in minimum transfer speeds, but the average and maximum is just astonishing.

Write performance for the MemoRight GT is much better than that of the MTRON PRO and Raptor 150GB. Once again, the average and maximum numbers when running RAID 0 rose a great deal. I can only imagine what a full array of eight or more drives would be like on an Areca controller.

Access Times

The biggest benefit of SSD technology is that it nearly eliminates access times altogether since the read and write heads do not have to wait for the platters to rotate. In traditional hard drives this becomes more of a problem when using a RAID array, but with SSD access times do not increase. As with the other SSD drives we have tested, the MemoRight GT keeps an access time of .01 milliseconds.