Higher Capacity Hard Drives Stay Faster

2011-05-17 • SEND FEEDBACK |
Related: hard drive

Higher capacity hard drives are faster as they fill up as compared to smaller ones, because for the same amount of data, the data is stored on the faster part of the drive.

When two hard drives are equally fast when empty, the higher capacity one ends up being much faster as it fills up (does not apply to SSDs).

See Larger Hard Drives Are Faster Than Smaller Ones and Why You Need More Space Than You Need.

This graph shows what happens as the drives of various sizes are filled with 1TB of data, as tested with DiskTester, your best testing tool for understanding and testing drive performance and reliability.

Click the graph to read more.

Accessing 1TB of data on a 3TB, 2TB, 1TB drive

Here’s another take, using the average speed for 1TB of data on different capacities:

Performance over 1TB of data on a 3TB, 2TB, 1TB drive