Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000: Two Terabyte RAID Redux
by Gary Key on April 23, 2007 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
HD Tune 2.53
Our first screenshot is the Hitachi drive with Automatic Acoustic Management turned off, NCQ turned on, and Volume Write-Back cache enabled in RAID 0 operation with the second screenshot showing the same configuration with a single drive. The RAID 0 setup shows a 93% increase in the minimum transfer rate and a 91% increase in the average sustained transfer rate. The maximum transfer rate also increases 95% with the burst rates increasing significantly although in actual operation this number is not completely valid. Turning off the write-back cache setting lowers the burst rate to 144.8 MB/sec. The RAID 0 setup is also reporting improved access times which once again reads 14.4ms with the write-back cache setting turned off.
Hard Disk Performance: HD Tach 3.0
We are also including HD Tach results for review. Once again the order of the screen shots is the same as in our HD Tune results and are based on the same settings. In this benchmark we see a 97% increase in the average read rates and a significant increase in burst speeds over the single drive configuration. These scores basically mirror the HD Tune results with the burst speed dropping to 204 MB/sec with volume write-back cache disabled. While these numbers are impressive, we will have to see if they translate directly to application scores.
Our first screenshot is the Hitachi drive with Automatic Acoustic Management turned off, NCQ turned on, and Volume Write-Back cache enabled in RAID 0 operation with the second screenshot showing the same configuration with a single drive. The RAID 0 setup shows a 93% increase in the minimum transfer rate and a 91% increase in the average sustained transfer rate. The maximum transfer rate also increases 95% with the burst rates increasing significantly although in actual operation this number is not completely valid. Turning off the write-back cache setting lowers the burst rate to 144.8 MB/sec. The RAID 0 setup is also reporting improved access times which once again reads 14.4ms with the write-back cache setting turned off.
Hard Disk Performance: HD Tach 3.0
We are also including HD Tach results for review. Once again the order of the screen shots is the same as in our HD Tune results and are based on the same settings. In this benchmark we see a 97% increase in the average read rates and a significant increase in burst speeds over the single drive configuration. These scores basically mirror the HD Tune results with the burst speed dropping to 204 MB/sec with volume write-back cache disabled. While these numbers are impressive, we will have to see if they translate directly to application scores.
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mesyn191 - Tuesday, April 24, 2007 - link
A POS software RAID controller was used again for the testing though, of course its gonna make RAID 0 look bad, or for that matter RAID 5 too. You need a good hardware (ie. Areca 1210) RAID controller with a CPU and dedicated cache for RAID 0 to be worth while, same goes for RAID 5 or 6.Sunrise089 - Monday, April 23, 2007 - link
I got my own share of bashing comments in this space for the previous article, apparently price/performance questions aren't as valid as dogma. Anyways, whatever the perception of the community to this article, I think it speaks well of AT that this story ever appeared. Many sites would just let their old article speak for itself, and leave the questions it raised unanswered. You went out and made a new rig and have hopefully answered some of the questions the folks on the fense regarding Raid O may have had. Keek up the good work.poohbear - Monday, April 23, 2007 - link
very true, that Anandtech follows up on their articles speaks quite highly of this site. cheers and thanks for clarifying 110% what raid 0 should and shouldnt be used for.:)Lifted - Monday, April 23, 2007 - link
I don't understand why AT mixes these review together. You always end up with people complaining about the compromises being made, and to a certain extene they're complaints are legitimate.Make one review for a hard drive, and a seperate review or article on RAID configurations. There are so many possibilities when it comes to RAID configurations that these short reviews can only raise more questions than they answer. You'll always have people saying something about the system, the array adapter, stripe sizes, even the damn GPU. When it comes down to it, people that use RAID where the performance counts (servers) are just going to by an HP, IBM, Dell or whatever system and use the adapter that comes with it. Home users and their 2 or 4 SATA RAID arrays are never going to see or need the performance from these systems that they seem to always be complaining about in their responses to these reviews. Is there a reason they need 180MB/s rather than 140MB/s to store mp3's and movies?
Eastbay2359 - Monday, April 23, 2007 - link
"The drive literally smoked its platters. Of course we lost the entire test image and a significant amount of test time"WHAT NO BACKUP !! :)
oh, from the previous paragraph
"a data backup nightmare"
yacoub - Monday, April 23, 2007 - link
yowza! so compared to smoking the tires in a sports car, apparently smoking the platters in a harddrive is NOT cool. ;)