Seagate GoFlex Slim 320GB USB 3.0 Hard Drive Review

HDTune v4.60

HD Tune Pro 4.60 is an extended version of HD Tune which includes many new features such as write benchmark, secure erasing, AAM setting, folder usage view, disk monitor, command line parameters and file benchmark.

Benchmark Results: The Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Slim 320GB drive’s average read speed was found to be 90.8MB/s with an average write speed of 87.3MB/s. The read and write tests had an access time of ~17.6ms and the burst rate was 84MB/s write and 175MB/s read.

The random access read and write test is a very important performance area to look at on solid state drives as some controllers have problems with random writes. In recent years the controllers have improved and the firmware has been better optimized for random read and write performance. Since this is the first time we have looked at the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Slim 320GB drive we figured it would be fun to see how it performs in random access read and write tests.

Random Access Read Test Results:

Benchmark Results: The Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Slim 320GB is designed to be an external drive, so the random access performance numbers aren’t too exciting as we ranged from 34 to 56 IOPS.

Random Access Write Test Results:

Benchmark Results: The write performance of the GoFlex Slim 320GB drive wasn’t bad as we saw anywhere from 23 to 74 IOPS.

64MB File Test

Benchmark Results: Running the built-in 64MB file benchmark test in HD Tune showed once again just how the drive performs with various file sizes. This test shows the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Slim 320GB drive topping out at over 100MB/sec in both the read and write tests.