SATA any better than ATA

[sdzierza]

Is there any benefit from using a SATA drive, is there a decent drive other
than the Raptor such as a 120 or larger made by a better company than the
others?

 

[Ben Pope]

Is there any benefit from using a SATA drive,

Not really. TCQ helps a bit, but not really noticeable in usual home tasks,
the cables are nicer (smaller).

is there a decent drive other than the Raptor

Not really... I think the Raptor is still the only 10K RPM drive and thus
wipes the floor with the rest.

such as a 120 or larger made by a better company than the others?

Other what?

The Raptor 740GD can sustain reading and writing at over 60Megs/s - thats
astounding, my 360GD does 50Megs/s and it's just so fast. The 740GD has
increased transfer rates and decreased latency.

There are plenty of good drives, the Raptors are just a different league.

I've got a fast drive (WD360GD) and a large drive (WD2500JD).

HDTACH:

Transfers:
WD360GD & WD2500JD
Read:
Beginning: 60Megs/s
End: 36Megs/s
Average: 50Megs/s

WD2500JD write:
Beginning: 30Megs/s
End: 18Megs/s
Average: 25Megs/s

I don't have the write speeds to hand for the Raptor but is about the same
as read speeds (I can write a 300Meg file in ~7seconds.)

Random Seek:
WD360GD:
<9ms
WD2500 seek
14ms

Ben

 

[John Smith]

You have a 360GB drive - wow, my HP servers onlyy have 160GB drives. Amazing
unless, of course, you mean a 36GB drive.

 

[Dr Teeth]

Not really... I think the Raptor is still the only 10K RPM drive and thus
wipes the floor with the rest.

Not really according to some h/d tests in PCW (May issue). It was
*slightly* faster than the Hitachi Deskstar 7200 ATA 100. Wouldn't
notice the difference in normal use, i.e. without benchmarks.


Cheers,

Guy

** I may not be perfect, but I'm
** English, and that's the next best thing!

 

[Creeping Stone]

Is there any benefit from using a SATA drive,

Not really. TCQ helps a bit, but not really noticeable in usual home tasks,
the cables are nicer (smaller).

is there a decent drive other than the Raptor

Not really... I think the Raptor is still the only 10K RPM drive and thus
wipes the floor with the rest.

such as a 120 or larger made by a better company than the others?

Other what?

The Raptor 740GD can sustain reading and writing at over 60Megs/s - thats
astounding, my 360GD does 50Megs/s and it's just so fast. The 740GD has
increased transfer rates and decreased latency.

There are plenty of good drives, the Raptors are just a different league.

I've got a fast drive (WD360GD) and a large drive (WD2500JD).

HDTACH:

http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach
(read only trialware)

Transfers:
WD360GD & WD2500JD
Read:
Beginning: 60Megs/s
End: 36Megs/s
Average: 50Megs/s

To Compare,
I just tested my Maxtor Diamondmax 2megbuf 40Gig Pata133 (quiet mode)
with HDTach, no reboot so testing with >50+ windows and
extra services open ;]

Beginning: 64.5 MB/s
End: 39 MB/s
Average:52.1 MB/s

(holy smoke

Maybe a different benchmark would bring out the Raptors strength ?

-Its got a good name anyway, wonder if its anything to do with jurassic
park?

 

[Rob Stow]

Not really according to some h/d tests in PCW (May issue). It was
*slightly* faster than the Hitachi Deskstar 7200 ATA 100. Wouldn't
notice the difference in normal use, i.e. without benchmarks.

SATA on a cheap motherboard that doesn't have PCI-X so
that you can use a good SATA controller doesn't give a
performance difference that you can detect without
benchmarks.

However, SATA in a workstation or server that has a good
PCI-X SATA controller can make an immediately noticeable
difference. Try building a system using something like
a Tyan S2885 as the foundation and the difference between
using four SATA drives in RAID 10 and four IDE drives in
RAID 10 will knock your socks off. Something like using
Drive Image to make an image of one partition and save that
image onto another partition will take about 30% less time.

(That is when using the four-port SATA controller built
onto the Tyan S2885 and hanging off of one of the PCI-X
buses. I'd love to see numbers comparing that controller
with something like one of the caching controllers from
3Ware.)

PCI-X will never show up on mainstream motherboards, but
PCI-Express should be coming soon to a motherboard near
you.

 

[billh]

Is there any benefit from using a SATA drive,

Not really. TCQ helps a bit, but not really noticeable in usual home tasks,
the cables are nicer (smaller).

is there a decent drive other than the Raptor

Not really... I think the Raptor is still the only 10K RPM drive and thus
wipes the floor with the rest.

such as a 120 or larger made by a better company than the others?

Other what?

The Raptor 740GD can sustain reading and writing at over 60Megs/s - thats
astounding, my 360GD does 50Megs/s and it's just so fast. The 740GD has
increased transfer rates and decreased latency.

There are plenty of good drives, the Raptors are just a different league.

I've got a fast drive (WD360GD) and a large drive (WD2500JD).

HDTACH:

http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach
(read only trialware)

Transfers:
WD360GD & WD2500JD
Read:
Beginning: 60Megs/s
End: 36Megs/s
Average: 50Megs/s

To Compare,
I just tested my Maxtor Diamondmax 2megbuf 40Gig Pata133 (quiet mode)
with HDTach, no reboot so testing with >50+ windows and
extra services open ;]

Beginning: 64.5 MB/s
End: 39 MB/s
Average:52.1 MB/s

(holy smoke

Maybe a different benchmark would bring out the Raptors strength ?

-Its got a good name anyway, wonder if its anything to do with jurassic
park?

Apart from the jurassic park use, a raptor is a carnivarous bird of prey.
Eagles, hawks, vultures, owls, etc are all raptors. They probably were
trying to link to the "speed" of eagles and hawks.
Billh

 

[Rob Stow]

=|[ Ben Pope's ]|= wrote:

Not really. TCQ helps a bit, but not really noticeable in usual home tasks,
the cables are nicer (smaller).



Not really... I think the Raptor is still the only 10K RPM drive and thus
wipes the floor with the rest.



Other what?

The Raptor 740GD can sustain reading and writing at over 60Megs/s - thats
astounding, my 360GD does 50Megs/s and it's just so fast. The 740GD has
increased transfer rates and decreased latency.

There are plenty of good drives, the Raptors are just a different league.

I've got a fast drive (WD360GD) and a large drive (WD2500JD).

HDTACH:

http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach
(read only trialware)

Transfers:
WD360GD & WD2500JD
Read:
Beginning: 60Megs/s
End: 36Megs/s
Average: 50Megs/s

To Compare,
I just tested my Maxtor Diamondmax 2megbuf 40Gig Pata133 (quiet mode)
with HDTach, no reboot so testing with >50+ windows and
extra services open ;]

Beginning: 64.5 MB/s
End: 39 MB/s
Average:52.1 MB/s

(holy smoke

Maybe a different benchmark would bring out the Raptors strength ?

I just did read-only HDTach (ver 2.70) on two drives
Max Min Average
Barracuda 7200.7 80 GB ATA 60.4 31.6 46.0
Barracude 7200.7 120 GB SATA 63.4 38.8 53.3

And an interesting result on something else ...
5400 rpm 40 GB Maxtor that is in that system
as the Master on the secondary IDE port:
with *idle* DVD drive as slave: 36.1 23.0 30.1
with DVD drive disconnected: 43.0 23.7 35.8

As with "Creeping Stone", I have lots of other things running
on this system that I didn't want to stop just to run a few
simple tests.

 

[Stephan Grossklass]

Is there any benefit from using a SATA drive,

The longer, less obstructive data cables can be a relief. Apart from
that, performance on equivalent PATA and SATA drives (say, Samsung's
SP1614N and SP1614C) is so close that it can be considered identical.

Stephan

 

[Stephan Grossklass]

Maybe a different benchmark would bring out the Raptors strength ?

I'd suggest <http://storagereview.com/comparison.html>. You'll find the
74 gig Raptor right among the 15k SCSI crowd when it comes to desktop
performance. The older 36 gig model is quite a bit slower, barely
winning against the 7K250. (Which still isn't too shabby.)

-Its got a good name anyway, wonder if its anything to do with jurassic
park?

I'd be amazed if it didn't. (Fortunately, the WD models are rather tame
and don't bite.

Stephan

 

[Ben Pope]

You have a 360GB drive - wow, my HP servers onlyy have 160GB drives.
Amazing unless, of course, you mean a 36GB drive.

Where did I say 360GB? I said 360GD, which is the model number.

Ben

 

[Ben Pope]

Not really according to some h/d tests in PCW (May issue). It was
*slightly* faster than the Hitachi Deskstar 7200 ATA 100. Wouldn't
notice the difference in normal use, i.e. without benchmarks.

Is that in reading AND writing? Is that in seek times?

If you're comparing sequential read, I'll believe you. For anything that
requires seeking, the Raptor will win hands down. The Hitachi looks like an
impressive drive but my experience of Deathstars (admittedly, when they were
IBM) thus far has not been good - they're fast drives that have a tendency
to die. If you believe the MTBF specs, then pleas explain how, about 2
years ago I was sitting in the same room as 5 people (out of maybe 30) who
have had one die on them? The odds of that would be pretty damn small.

The GXP75 was a quick drive for it's time, they were the most unreliable
drive ever. My GXP60 died within a year and was replaced by a GXP120, that,
although is still going, has always made a weird noise coupled with a second
or two of inability to access it maybe once or twice a day.

Ben

 

[Ben Pope]

Transfers:
WD360GD & WD2500JD
Read:
Beginning: 60Megs/s
End: 36Megs/s
Average: 50Megs/s

To Compare,
I just tested my Maxtor Diamondmax 2megbuf 40Gig Pata133 (quiet mode)
with HDTach, no reboot so testing with >50+ windows and
extra services open ;]

Beginning: 64.5 MB/s
End: 39 MB/s
Average:52.1 MB/s

(holy smoke

Maybe a different benchmark would bring out the Raptors strength ?

Same benchmark, but the figure you missed out - seek times.

Ben

 

[Ben Pope]

The longer, less obstructive data cables can be a relief. Apart from
that, performance on equivalent PATA and SATA drives (say, Samsung's
SP1614N and SP1614C) is so close that it can be considered identical.

Thats 'cos it's probably the same drive - the SATA one likely has a PATA to
SATA bridge chip.

Disk performance is not usually limited by the ATA interface, but by the
mechanics of the drive.

Ben

 

[Creeping Stone]

Transfers:
WD360GD & WD2500JD
Read:
Beginning: 60Megs/s
End: 36Megs/s
Average: 50Megs/s

To Compare,
I just tested my Maxtor Diamondmax 2megbuf 40Gig Pata133 (quiet mode)
with HDTach, no reboot so testing with >50+ windows and
extra services open ;]

Beginning: 64.5 MB/s
End: 39 MB/s
Average:52.1 MB/s

(holy smoke
Maybe a different benchmark would bring out the Raptors strength ?

Same benchmark, but the figure you missed out - seek times.

Random access: 14.1 ms,

- so thats a bit slower, tho acoustic management is on.

The Maxtors transfer rates are better, thats not what I expected.

Im not saying its as good as a Raptor in other respects,
but it was cheap and holds its own in this bench )

Its a pity HDTach wouldn't test the Ramdrive :]

 

[Creeping Stone]

sdzierza wrote:
Is there any benefit from using a SATA drive,
Not really. TCQ helps a bit, but not really noticeable in usual home tasks,
the cables are nicer (smaller).

is there a decent drive other than the Raptor
Not really... I think the Raptor is still the only 10K RPM drive and thus
wipes the floor with the rest.

such as a 120 or larger made by a better company than the others?
Other what?

The Raptor 740GD can sustain reading and writing at over 60Megs/s - thats
astounding, my 360GD does 50Megs/s and it's just so fast. The 740GD has
increased transfer rates and decreased latency.

There are plenty of good drives, the Raptors are just a different league.

I've got a fast drive (WD360GD) and a large drive (WD2500JD).

HDTACH:

http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach
(read only trialware)

Transfers:
WD360GD & WD2500JD
Read:
Beginning: 60Megs/s
End: 36Megs/s
Average: 50Megs/s

To Compare,
I just tested my Maxtor Diamondmax 2megbuf 40Gig Pata133 (quiet mode)
with HDTach, no reboot so testing with >50+ windows and
extra services open ;]

Beginning: 64.5 MB/s
End: 39 MB/s
Average:52.1 MB/s

(holy smoke

Maybe a different benchmark would bring out the Raptors strength ?

-Its got a good name anyway, wonder if its anything to do with jurassic
park?

Apart from the jurassic park use, a raptor is a carnivarous bird of prey.
Eagles, hawks, vultures, owls, etc are all raptors. They probably were
trying to link to the "speed" of eagles and hawks.
Billh

Well then, I want a Peregine Falcon

 

[Creeping Stone]

You have a 360GB drive - wow, my HP servers onlyy have 160GB drives.
Amazing unless, of course, you mean a 36GB drive.

Where did I say 360GB? I said 360GD, which is the model number.

Ben

Yeh? well what about the 740 Gig one you were talking about ;P

 

[Creeping Stone]

Maybe a different benchmark would bring out the Raptors strength ?

I'd suggest <http://storagereview.com/comparison.html>. Nice link...
You'll find the
74 gig Raptor right among the 15k SCSI crowd when it comes to desktop
performance. The older 36 gig model is quite a bit slower, barely
winning against the 7K250. (Which still isn't too shabby.)

I see that, it scores twice as much in SR-Highend drivemark2002 as my wee
Maxtor!

(thats more like it

 

[Creeping Stone]

=|[ Rob Stow's ]|= wrote:

.............

And an interesting result on something else ...
5400 rpm 40 GB Maxtor that is in that system
as the Master on the secondary IDE port:
with *idle* DVD drive as slave: 36.1 23.0 30.1
with DVD drive disconnected: 43.0 23.7 35.8

Slowcoach ;p

 

[Ben Pope]

=|[ Ben Pope's ]|= wrote:

Transfers:
WD360GD & WD2500JD
Read:
Beginning: 60Megs/s
End: 36Megs/s
Average: 50Megs/s

To Compare,
I just tested my Maxtor Diamondmax 2megbuf 40Gig Pata133 (quiet mode)
with HDTach, no reboot so testing with >50+ windows and
extra services open ;]

Beginning: 64.5 MB/s
End: 39 MB/s
Average:52.1 MB/s

(holy smoke
Maybe a different benchmark would bring out the Raptors strength ?

Same benchmark, but the figure you missed out - seek times.

Random access: 14.1 ms,

- so thats a bit slower, tho acoustic management is on.

Fair enough, but I wouldn't expect it to drop much when Acoustic management
is off.

The Maxtors transfer rates are better, thats not what I expected.

The maximum sustained transfer rates comes down to how fast the head can
read/write data - if you increase spindle speed or density, then the head
will have to be able to read faster.

Im not saying its as good as a Raptor in other respects,
but it was cheap and holds its own in this bench )

Well my 2500JD was pretty cheap in comparison (about 7 times the capacity,
about 50% more expensive), and as my figures suggest - same read transfer
speeds as the Raptor. I know for a fact it writes significant'y slower and
if you are searching across many files the Raptor is noticeably faster due
to the seek time of 8.5ms.

Its a pity HDTach wouldn't test the Ramdrive :]

Just do a RAM benchmark - read is in the order of 2.5GB/s, writes a little
under 1GB/s (using DDR333)

Ben