BlueSmoke - HDD Article : IBM Deskstar 60GXP

		Date	: Aug 31st, 2001
		Category	: Storage
		Manufacturer	: IBM
		Author	: Jin-Wei Tioh

IBM drives have always been generally associated with quality and performance, albeit with more sticker shock. It has consistently been the pioneer in IDE drive density, up till 1999 when IBM and Western Digital collaborated by sharing their technologies. This resulted in the IBM Deskstar 22GXP and the Western Digital Expert AC418000, units which were neck and neck with each other, so much so that deciding between the two was simply a matter of brand preference and price. Ironically, Western Digital now takes the pole position, being the first to release a 7200 RPM IDE drive with a 20GB/platter density, the Caviar WD400BB. Other manufacturers followed suit, with IBM being the latest in offering a similar storage solution.

Meet the new IBM Deskstar 60GXP, touted as IBM's flagship IDE hard drive. Like the Seagate U Series 5, its name is a bit of a misnomer, leading the end-user to think that it is the lower-end cousin of the 75GXP. The boot is on the other leg : it is the successor to the 75GXP. As implied earlier, it packs 20GB/platter to achieve a 3-platter flagship of 60GB. Note 3-platters as opposed to the flagship 5-platter, 15GB/platter design employed in the 75GXP, hence the "60GXP" and the "75GXP" misnomer. The drive packaging is your standard issue ESD bag, offering little protection against external shocks. Like most competitors, IBM specs an average seek time of 8.5ms and a 2MB buffer, making the 60GXP a suitable contender in the entry-level server arena. A de facto 3-year warranty backs the drive. Additionally, the 60GXP ships exclusively with the ATA-100 interface, though older specs (ATA-66 and ATA-33) will work as well. While there is now a valid justification for ATA-66, what with sequential transfer rates exceeding 33MB/s, it will be quite some time until anyone breaks the 66MB/s barrier to necessitate a real need for ATA-100.

The 75GXP was a screamer. Let's see what ZD's WinBench 99 has to say about the 60GXP.

Testbed Low-Level Measurements Methodology

HDD	Disk Access Time	Disk Read/Transfer Rate
		Beginning	End
IBM Deskstar 60GXP (40.0GB ATA-100)	12.3	39800	21100
IBM Deskstar 75GXP (20.0GB ATA-100)	12.4	37500	20900
Quantum Fireball Plus AS (20.0GB ATA-100)	13.5	36000	21100
Seagate Barracuda ATA II (30.0GB ATA-100)	13.3	29700	19900

WinBench 99 clocks the 60GXP at 12.3ms, definitely ahead of the Fireball Plus AS and the Barracuda ATA II, but virtually in a stalemate with its older brother the 75GXP. Subtracting 4.2ms (the rotational latency of all 7200rpm drives) yields a measured seek time of 8.1millisecond, beating Big Blue's own specs by a fair margin, something not too common these days. The outer-zone STR of 39.8MB/s pulls the 60GXP ahead of all contenders. The inner-zone STR is another matter, with the 60GXP and the Fireball Plus AS in a deadlock.

Let's scrutinize the higher-level WinBench 99 Disk WinMarks to see how do the above figures play out in real-world performance.

Testbed Disk WinMarks Methodology

HDD	Business	High-End
IBM Deskstar 60GXP (40.0GB ATA-100)	4960	17700
IBM Deskstar 75GXP (20.0GB ATA-100)	4950	15700
Quantum Fireball Plus AS (20.0GB ATA-100)	5010	15500
Seagate Barracuda ATA II (30.0GB ATA-100)	4270	14000

Here, there isn't really any trend. The Fireball AS surprisingly bests both the 60GXP and 75GXP (which score identically) in ZD's Business Disk WinMark score, though by a small margin (2%). In the High-End Disk WinMark, the 60GXP flexes its muscles and leads the pack with 17.7MB/s, leaving the 75GXP in the dust.

Overall, it can more or less be said that WinBench 99 shows the Deskstar 60GXP to be the performance leader.

Decent Disk WinMarks are only part of the story. Let's see what enlightenment Intel's IOMeter brings.

Testbed IOMeter - Total I/Os Per Second Methodology

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.

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.

The operating temperature and noise produced by the 60GXP is definitely lower than the levels found in previous generations of 7200 RPM drives (eg. the IBM 14GXP or the Seagate Medalist Pro). However, while previous Deskstars are usually the quietest drives around (something we can personally attest to in the case of the Deskstar 5 and Deskstar 8), the 60GXP cannot really hold that claim. Idle noise is undetectable above our testbed's power supply. Seeks are short and shallow, akin to the Seagate Medalist Pro at amplitudes. In most cases, the 60GXP will be just fine without any active cooling.

The IBM Deskstar 60GXP emerges as the clear winner, with its dominant scores in all IOMeter access patterns and in ZD's Business and High-End Disk WinMarks. It is the new leader in the 7200 RPM IDE category at BlueSmoke.

IBM Deskstar 60GXP (IC35L040AVER07)
Other Models :	IC35L060AVER07 (60 GB), IC35L030AVER07 (30 GB), IC35L020AVER07 (20 GB), IC35L010AVER07 (10 GB)