Maximum Surface Temperature

We monitored the surface temperature of four seven disk drives during their benchmarks. The following chart shows their operating temperature range, from idle to maximum load. Please note that instead of giving you the absolute numbers, we are showing the temperature delta, which is the difference between the actual case temperature and the ambient room temperature.

The Samsung EcoGreen F4 (HD204UI) is a surprisingly cool drive. At full load, it was just 6.4 °C above ambient temperature. The only hard disk drive in our comparison to beat that was the 2 TB Western Digital Caviar Green AFT.

However, when we idled it, its thermal output (and by inference, power consumption too), dropped tremendously. It was just 2.0 °C above ambient temperature, making it the coolest-running hard disk drive in the comparison.

WinBench 99 Version 2.0

Platter Data Transfer Profile

The maximum platter transfer rate appeared to be about 150 MB/s which progressively dropped across the platter to about 70 MB/s at the last track. This drive has a very odd platter profile, with large, consistent fluctuations in transfer rates across the platter. We really cannot figure why this drive is producing such a platter profile. If you have an idea, let us know!

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