Samsung Story Station Plus external e-SATA hard drive speed test on Linux

This blog post shows the results of the speed test I've done with my new Samsung Story Station Plus external e-SATA hard drive on a Linux nettop. Executive summary: the drive is large, fast and quiet; e-SATA with hot-plug works fine and full speed on Ubuntu Hardy and Ubuntu Karmic out-of-the box.

Speed results:

• sustained local hard drive sequential read: 53 MB/s; dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null bs=1M
• sustained local hard drive sequential write: (not tried to avoid possible damage to the existing system)
• sustained local hard drive random seek + read 4 KB: 50 seeks/s, 206 kB/s
• sustained external e-SATA hard drive sequential read: 112 MB/s: dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/null bs=1M
• sustained external e-SATA hard drive sequential write: 108 MB/s: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M seek=32000
• sustained external e-SATA hard drive random seek + read 4 KB: 90 seeks/s, 370 kB/s

System information:

• Linux Ubuntu Hardy 64-bit desktop
• dual Intel Atom 330 @ 1.60GHz
• Nvidia ION
• 3.3GB RAM
• internal hard drive: 2.5"; 250 GB; Hitachi HTS54322 FBEO
• external e-SATA hard drive: Samsung Story Station Plus; 3.5"; 2TB; SAMSUNG HD203WI 1AN1
• random seek benchmark implemented in Python, using 0.3% CPU

Other parameters of the external drive:

• very quiet, I was not able to tell when it's reading during the sequential read or write benchmarks
• very quiet, I had to lean with my ear 5 cm from the drive to hear it working during the random seek test in a work environment. However, at home, when there is no other noise, I can hear the seeks if I concentrate.
• low-power (0.1 Watt in standby, goes to standby quickly).

I've repeated the speed test with a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo 3560 notebook running Ubuntu Karmic 32-bit desktop, and the speeds are about the same as with the nettop.