Lance wrote:
I haven't quite seen this issue addressed in my Google search and hope
someone can give me some clues.
I've finally built my own computer around the Intel D875PBZ
motherboard and have two Western Digital Raptor SATA drives (WD360GD, 36.7
GB
each) in a RAID 0 (128 kB, striped) array plugged directly into the
motherboard. Intel Application Accelerator RAID edition v3.5. Intel
BIOS P18.
Also have a 120 GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 (6Y120P0) for data storage
running
as master on the primary IDE controller. It runs UDMA Mode 5.
Don't laugh, but about the only thing I have to test drive speed is
EZ CD Creator. EZCD has this System Test tool that says it tests the
read speed of system drives. It shows the following:
Maxtor - 54 MB/sec read rate.
Raptor - 48 MB/sec read rate.
I would have thought that the RAID'ed Raptors would come in
significantly higher than the Maxtor.
Am I expecting too much from the array? Is there a better performance
test tool I could use?
OK, I'm going to answer my own question. The EZCD Creator System Test isn't
accurate for my purpose. I wound up using HD_Speed from
http://www.steelbytes.com/. This utility simply reads or writes various
sized blocks of data to or from the hard disk and calculates a data transfer
rate. Block size can be "Auto" or user selectable from 4kB to 16MB. There is
also an option for testing "burst rate" which I assume takes advantage of
the disk buffer.
The read data rate for the UDMA 5 drive starts out at 30MB/sec @ 4kB block
size, then increases to 57 MB/sec @ 16kB block and remains constant for
bigger block sizes. Burst rate peaks at around 89 MB/sec @ 128 kB block
size.
Similarly, the RAID 0 SATA drives start out at 34MB/sec @ 4kB block size,
then increases to 110 MB/sec @ 128kB block size and remains constant for
bigger block sizes. Burst rate peaks at around 194 MB/sec at block sizes of
256kB and 512kB.
So my RAID'ed SATA drives are indeed faster than my UDMA 5 drive, but the
difference isn't very much at block sizes less than 16kB. For blocks sizes
greater than 128kB, the RAID'ed SATA drives are about double the speed of
UDMA 5.
All in all, I'm pleased as punch. My major need for speed comes from editing
photos and video so these characteristics are perfect for my needs.
Lance
*****