Neal Nelson Benchmark Laboratory, Disk Drives

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	NEAL NELSON BENCHMARK LABORATORY Disk Drives - Frequently Asked Questions

1) "What does 'Relative Performance Rating(TM)' mean?"
	It is a number that represents the relative speed of the tested drive as compared to a reference drive. A number of 1,000 indicates that both the reference drive and the tested drive delivered the same performance. If a drive is given a 'Relative Performance Rating(TM)' of 1,200 that means that based on our tests the drive delivers 20% better performance than our reference drive. Our reference drive is a Maxtor 320 gigabyte IDE drive.
2) "Why are there four columns in the Relative Performance Rating(TM) section?"
	Because we run multiple tests at different database sizes. For example, if the PR numbers are 1200/1400/1600 that would mean that the drive was 20% faster than our baseline drive when accessing a 3.5 gigabyte database, 40% faster than our baseline drive when accessing a 16 gigabyte database and 60% faster than our baseline drive when accessing a 62 gigabyte database.
3) "Why do some drives only have one or two PR numbers?"
	Because the smaller drives cannot run the tests with the larger database sizes.
4) "Why don't you list prices?"
	Because they are always changing and we can't keep up.
5) "Why do you test/list those old, small slow drives?"
	Because some people come to this site thinking "I have this old/slow drive in my machine, what kind of improvement would I see if I bought a new/fast drive?" I want to help those people make that decision by showing numbers for both old and new drives.

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