HD Tach
We tested HD Tach with the benchmark's full variable zone size setting.

With by far the highest areal density of the lot, it's no surprise to see the Spinpoint smoke the field in sustained sequential transfer rates. The F1's closest competition here is Seagate's Barracuda 7200.11, whose 250GB platters fall 84GB short of those in the F1.

Burst speeds are all about cache performance, and the F1 looks pretty snappy here, as well. Sure, it doesn't quite match the prowess displayed by the Seagate drives, but the Spinpoint is quicker than the terabyte Deskstar and everything in Western Digital's stable.

The F1's 13.7-millisecond HD Tach random access time puts the drive just about exactly in the middle of its closest competitors. This isn't a bad place to be, although it's worth noting that both the Caviar GP and RE2-GP spin at significantly less than 7,200RPM.

HD Tach's CPU utilization results are well within the app's +/- 2% margin of error in this test.