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Date |
: Aug 31st, 2001 |
| Category |
: Storage |
| Manufacturer |
: IBM |
| Author |
: Jin-Wei Tioh |
|
| HDD |
Load |
Access
Pattern |
| File Server |
Workstation |
Database |
Video
Workstation
|
| IBM
Deskstar 60GXP (40.0GB ATA-100) |
Linear |
71.67 |
85.15 |
71.79 |
3136.53 |
| Light |
106.22 |
118.65 |
104.63 |
3504.76 |
| Moderate |
128.00 |
141.30 |
126.62 |
3504.72 |
| Heavy |
143.43 |
156.94 |
142.72 |
3504.80 |
| IBM
Deskstar 75GXP (20.0GB ATA-100) |
Linear |
75.49 |
89.50 |
74.24 |
2951.34 |
| Light |
105.94 |
120.65 |
103.21 |
3125.50 |
| Moderate |
126.03 |
143.25 |
124.70 |
3123.92 |
| Heavy |
141.94 |
160.31 |
141.89 |
3073.09 |
| Quantum
Fireball AS (20.0GB ATA-100) |
Linear |
73.28 |
84.93 |
77.49 |
2788.41 |
| Light |
95.74 |
95.68 |
83.45 |
2838.38 |
| Moderate |
106.66 |
103.55 |
103.15 |
2833.93 |
| Heavy |
114.29 |
102.67 |
110.54 |
2830.29 |
| Seagate
Barracuda ATA II (30.0GB ATA-100) |
Linear |
66.25 |
77.56 |
63.49 |
3116.63 |
| Light |
82.51 |
90.96 |
71.89 |
3304.99 |
| Moderate |
92.32 |
100.48 |
76.37 |
3303.17 |
| Heavy |
106.71 |
109.83 |
87.78 |
3303.24 |
The Deskstar 60GXP really starts to shine in IOMeter. A quick glance at the table shows the 6OGXP as having the highest number of I/Os per second under all loads and access patterns. But hold on a minute, how can it be the best drive when it is outscored by the 75GXP? It is our experience that lower capacity members of a drive family typically give higher IOMeter scores than their higher capacity siblings, primarily in the Workstation access pattern and Linear load scores. Therefore, it would be reasonable to conclude that the 75GXP's scores are somewhat "artificially" inflated, ie. a 40GB 75GXP would give at best, the same scores, if not slightly lower, than those of the 60GXP.
Interestingly, while the Seagate Barracuda ATA II has generally been lacking behind so far, it is practically nipping at the heels of the 60GXP and 75GXP under the Video Workstation access pattern. The purpose of the Video Workstation access pattern (which consists of 100% sequential writes) is to simulate a digital NLE environment, where video is captured to the hard drive. Thus, the faster a hard drive can write, the more suitable it is for storing bandwidth intensive data like digitized video. As demonstrated in our other HDD articles, this seems to be more of Seagate's forte.
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