Fujitsu 15K SAS Drives

[Particle]

http://www.pcrpg.org/pics/misc/fujitsu15kmirror.png

Above is pictured a mirror of two Fujitsu 147GB 15K SAS drives on an LSI PERC 5/i controller.

Access time is yummy. :D So is overall system performance. These were only $97 each, so they seemed like real winners. Cheaper than SSDs, cheaper than Raptors, etc. hehe

Anyone want any tests? I can compare it to a 5x500 RAID-5, 2x500 RAID-1, or 2x8 ramdisk on an ACARD ANS-9010.

[Vengance_01]

Nice Drives. Get 1 more and do a raid 5 OS drive:)

[trueplaya4ever8]

Shouldn't it be faster? I was going to get a pair of those!

Where did you find them for $97?

[Particle]

^ I've got them short stroked for my OS to the part where it first starts dipping to around 100MB/s. Random I/O scores are strong too at around 35MB/s or so for random write and random read. It has really made a difference for game loading. Remember that this is a mirror, not a stripe.

I was lucky enough to find a large stack of them on eBay selling for $97 each. They were used for 30 days in a demo server prior to their sale. That was the find that really sold this for me instead of going Velociraptor or SSD.

[TimoneX]

I'd like to see some ATTO overlapped I/O numbers if you're willing. I've been watching those Fujitsu drives on fleabay for some time, but falling SSD prices keep stopping me from buying a couple for OS/Program drives. How do you like the Perc 5/i BTW? I almost grabbed one of those too, but got a smokin' deal on this Adaptec 3085 instead. Very nice.

[Particle]

^ I ran it, but it looks like my controller's cache is messing with results.

http://www.pcrpg.org/pics/computer/attooverlapped1.png

[TimoneX]

Hmmm...yes those results are no good. You should definitely send me those drives immediately for re-evaluation and permanent residence in my case.

This is RAID0 with 5 drives? Very nice...what stripe size and OS?

I will be going down this path too if SSDs don't shape up. Well I'd probably just do 2xRAID0 SAS drives and 4xRAID5 WD6401aals. Need lotsa storage.

[Particle]

Disabling every cache option I could find (disk cache, controller cache, IO cache, read ahead) here is what I got with a queue of 10 on overlapped IO:

http://www.pcrpg.org/pics/computer/attooverlapped2.png

This isn't really accurate either though since these options don't represent how the group is used in real life. Oh well, two extremes are better than one. :)

This is just a pair in RAID-1 (mirror).

[TimoneX]

Refresh my weak memory. The Dell Perc 5 has 256MB DDR & the 500Mhz IOP yes?

[Particle]

Yes, I believe that is correct. They come with 256MB (but can be upgraded to 512MB) and come with a 500MHz Intel IOP333.

[TimoneX]

I know the SAS drives have different connections logistically...no gap between the power and data connectors. Did the regular mini-sas to sata internal cables work okay?

I'm picking your brain cuz I have 2x HPT Ext-MS-1M4S cables connected to an Adaptec 3085 and have been considering SAS system drives in RAID0.

Good info here...thanx for sharing!

[Particle]

The PERC 5 I've got doesn't use mini connectors. It just uses two 4-in-1 SFF 8484 connectors, and I used standard fan-out SATA cables. I broke the sides off of the SATA data and power connectors and used them that way (and will until my 8484>4x8482 cable comes in). The SATA fanouts can be had for about $15 each, but the 8482 fanout was about $40.

[TimoneX]

Ahhh...that explains the mystery. Nice solution. :)

Did you setup your OS on that array? I'm trying to get an idea of how it feels as an OS/programs drive. I setup win7 x64 on a 4x320 RAID5 array on the Adaptec 3085 and it feels alot smoother to me than even the 4x RAID0 array did on the ICH10R. These are older 7200.10 perps so I'm thinking the SAS drives are probably buttery smooth for multi-tasking.

[Particle]

Yes, I use first 60GB for my OS partition. I use the rest as a partition with apps on it (games, Office, and whatnot). This keeps the OS stuff on the very fastest slice of the drives. It's noticeably faster than anything I've used as a boot drive before. I rather like it. The Fujitsus will offer a much lower random access time than your 7200.10s. I can't imagine that they wouldn't be even faster, especially in the kind of small, randomish I/O that you'll experience on a boot volume.