Image processing

Adobe Photoshop

ACDSee PowerPack

Scores from WorldBench's image processing tests are pretty close, although the solid-state OCZ and Samsung drives don't maintain their dominance here. The MasterDrive is competitive in the Photoshop test, but with ACDSee, it's more than three times slower than the rest.

Multitasking and office applications

Microsoft Office

Mozilla

Mozilla and Windows Media Encoder

WorldBench's office and multitasking tests don't give the drives much opportunity to show off. The MX doesn't trail the pack by a huge margin here, but it's still the slowest drive of the lot.

Other applications

WinZip

Nero

These are WorldBench's most disk-intensive tests, and it shows. The OCZ and Samsung SSDs come out ahead, and they have a huge lead in the Nero test. But as fast as flash is with those drives, it doesn't do much for the MasterDrive MX, which is significantly slower than even our 5,400-RPM mechanical drives.

Among our traditional hard drives, Western Digital's Scorpios have a definite edge. The Black has a healthy lead in the WinZip test, and the 5,400-RPM Blue manages to beat Seagate's 7,200-RPM Momentus in both WinZip and Nero.