hard drives & raid - benchmark and compare!

[Guest LithoTech]

Upon looking at the bench scores (and real-world content creation peformance) of my seagate SATAII 160s, I bought two ST3250624AS spindles from Buy.com.

 

These units were advertised at 16 meg cache and SATAII interface (confirmed by checking the specs on Seagate's support site before purchase), but they bench out at SATA I and read in at the driver description in device mgr as "1st Gen SATA 150".

 

So... what is the issue, since seagate claims this unit is SATAII? Old unit? Old firmware? I researched firmware and supposedly the 7200.9 series is capable of proper SATAII with the version installed, which is Firmware revision 3.AAH .

 

Anyone got any ideas? Should I yell at Buy.com or ask Seagate what the hell is up with the disks?

 

Wouldn't matter to me that much, but that the real-world performance re-linking in dreamweaver 8.0 on a large site is impacted similar to what you see in HDTach and ATTO in terms of write performance, about a 40% hit. If I'd had any clue I wouldn't get SATA300 speeds, I wouldn't have bought these spindles!

 

Is there any limitation on how many Sata II RAID arrays the NF4 interface can handle? Is it only only 300mbs on the first array and 150 on the second?

 

Ideas anyone?

 

At first I thought you bought two 160gig drives with 16mb cache, which they don't make (16mb cache starts at 250gig capacities). I see you bought 250's now...

 

Follow SoundX's advice first, check Segate's site about the sats1 - sata2 thing.

 

Also, at least one drive manufacturer has a jumper setting that kicks the drive down to sata1, you could check into that... perhaps they ship them default to sata1 for best compatibility reasons.

 

I had thought that we were so far away from saturating the sata1 bandwidth that running in sata1 as opposed to sata2 shouldn't affect performance. However, maybe I've missunderstood here, and maybe burst rates are greatly affected and hence affecting overall performance; or maybe when using raid the limitation is no longer in affect.

 

In any case, if ther are indeed sata2 drives, I'm sure it is just a compatibility issue and they ship the drives that way. You just need to track down how to get them into sata2 mode. If there is nothing on their website, try google or search this site:

 

http://www.storagereview.com/

 

Then failing that, contact Seagate directly. I wouldn't contact buy.com unless you need to return or exchange the drives, or if they shipped you the wrong drives.

[BadWillHunting]

LOL

 

I never said my ST3160s have 16 meg cache... they have 8. However, they are enough for me to verify that I'm getting SATAII out of the NF4 interface.

 

I was asked by Seagate tech support to provide my serial numers and FW revision... which I did, but the firmware revision on the 250s I just got is the same one on the 160s, maybe not the newest but seems fishy that they'd use different ones in the same family.

 

I also note that the the tech responding asked me to verify that the NF4 board can actually DO SATAII...I indicated I was running OK at SATAII with two more drives from the same family, but I guess reading isn't a prerequisite for getting a tech job at Seagate. Guess I'll have to be escalated to a tech who has a clue.

:confused:

[BadWillHunting]

I know it's bad to reply to my own post, but thought I'd give an update.

 

I solved the problem. NO, it wasn't the "downshift to 1.5mbs SataI jumper on the drives... Hell no, it wasn't the DFI NF4 board.

 

IT WAS BAD FIRMWARE. Not wrong version, BAD. Impatient with Seagate Support's response time, I inquired with a friend who does a lot of OEM with Seagate and he had access to their firmware dl database.

 

A reflash of firmware on the drives from revision 3.AAH to 3.AAH (who KNOWS what was different?!?) later, they work great, over 300Mbs speeds on burst and quick as hell on large-scale concurrent overlapped read/write access.

 

Score: Geeks and DFI-Street 10, Seagate support agent 0.

 

Not knocking Seagate, just think their frontline support agents should know a little more. I got asked stupid questions and was handled from a total script, not helped.

 

 

I'll post the bench scores when I get a chance to put up the images

[Lazerus]

The NF4 RAID controller can definately run 2 separate RAID 0 arrays at SATA II Speeds.

 

Have you checked the Seagate site. Hitachi drives need to have "Feature Tool" run on them (via DOS) to enable SATA II speeds. Perhaps there is something like that required for the Seagates.

 

can someone elaborate on this?

I bought two hitachi sataIIs (7k80s) to run raid 0. Ill be setting all this up in a couple days when the rest of my parts get here. I was unaware of any probs with setting up the hitachis

[OldGuy]

can someone elaborate on this?

I bought two hitachi sataIIs (7k80s) to run raid 0. Ill be setting all this up in a couple days when the rest of my parts get here. I was unaware of any probs with setting up the hitachis

 

You just need to download a DOS utility from Hitachi and enable SATA II...and remember to change it back if you use the drives in a non SATA II set up...

[BadWillHunting]

can someone elaborate on this?

I bought two hitachi sataIIs (7k80s) to run raid 0. Ill be setting all this up in a couple days when the rest of my parts get here. I was unaware of any probs with setting up the hitachis

 

Many SATAII drives (including my Seagates) have a jumperblock on the back and if a jumper is set in one position (usually is noted on the drive label for reference), the drive is set to "compatibility" mode and only does/reads as SATA I -150 interface.

 

I wouldn't worry, just check the drives when they arrive for such a jumper and make sure its set (or not set) properly for SATAII.

[Praz]

can someone elaborate on this?

I bought two hitachi sataIIs (7k80s) to run raid 0. Ill be setting all this up in a couple days when the rest of my parts get here. I was unaware of any probs with setting up the hitachis

For Hitachi you need to use Feature Tool (v2.01) to enable SATA II. Although you can download a bootable cd image it would never work for me. I had to use the floppy version.

[Guest BassKozz]

Here's my general spec's:

AMD Sepron 3400+

2gb Ram

WinXP SP2

LSI MegaRaid i4 (PCI - 4 channel / 8 Drive PATA raid controller)

3x Seagate ST3400632A (in a RAID5 array)

---

 

As you can see, not the preformance I was expecting from this array.

 

Can you help me fix this? (Storage Review.com Post... indepth spec's and benchmarks)

[Redbeaver]

@HappyGames: (or anybody else)

 

one time u had a picture of RAID types, being presented as different pics of water dispenser jugs, being stacked together........

 

i wanna see it again... can u find it for me? i think its the best way to teach people what r the types of RAID are there.........

 

 

thanks!!!

[Redbeaver]

come on, nobody has that pic?? i cant believe with all the geeks...i mean....enthusiasts around here, nobody would save such an image lol

 

i did, but i lost it over reformat....

[FelipeV]

You'll have to break your array and rebuild with 16kbs stripe sizes if that's what you're after. The default Windows NTFS is already 4kbs. So there you'll get your 4/1 perfect ratio (but remember that rule of thumb applies to 2 drive RAID arrays only).

 

However, if you're thinking man that's gonna be a pain in the butt, I can guarantee you that in real world normal day to day use you'll never know that you're at 64/4.

 

I've done it both ways and the only way I can tell the difference is in benchmarking.

 

So if you're after the best benchies with a 2 drive array, then 16/4 is the way to go.

 

What ratio should I use for 3 HD Array ? (3xHitachi 80GB Sata2)

[OsamaBinAthlon+]

I currently have a pata 7200rpm drive.

I bought a raptor.

Don't have many programs, so with winXPhome i've got a 18 second bootup.

How much faster with Raptor, or what other differences will I notice.

 

Sincerely

 

Osama Bin Athlon

plus:)