Which is the better HDD to get? 640Gig going into Raid

[deathman20]

Looking at the Western Digital 640Gigs. Well got 2 options that I've been looking at but if there are some better ones please spit them out ;)

Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136218

Reason why im asking at least between these 2, zipzoomfly has the Caviar SE16 for $65, compared to the $75 newegg has it for. The Black is $80.

Now space isn't a 100% issue with me, I have 2x 320's currently that I backup to a 640Gig drive (WD 640Gig). I just know I've had good luck with my 640Gig that I have currently, its quiet fast and happy with it.

But if there is a a faster drive even if its 500Gig single platter I'd take that into consideration.

Ideally I'd like to see if I can get this ordered today, so I can get my PC back to running 100% again.

[gangaskan]

as far as i know the WD6400AAKS has dual 320 gig platters

checking on newegg review's the SE16's are noted as Caviar "blue"


from reading on toms about it someone said

green = low power / low performance
blue= medium power / medium performance
black = high power / high performance



hope this helps :)

[deathman20]

Well think that solves that, guess blacks it will be.

[fritzman]

Yep... everyone is raving about the Blacks' performance. Can't go wrong with them.

[TimoneX]

Two years added to the SE16's warranty too. I only snagged one WD6401aals for testing(unfortunately) when newegg had them for $70. Great performing drive. Doesn't match up to the Sammy F1 in pure STR, but smokes it in access time and overlapped I/O's.

[forceman]

I don't know that the black is $15 faster than the SE16, the SE16 is still a damn fast drive.

[fritzman]

Two years added to the SE16's warranty too. I only snagged one WD6401aals for testing(unfortunately) when newegg had them for $70. Great performing drive. Doesn't match up to the Sammy F1 in pure STR, but smokes it in access time and overlapped I/O's.

Yeah... I believe it is the AAKS drive that is the top performing one (W/D drive) atm, and I'm sure I saw someone mention today that they were $80 somewhere right now. (look at that... it's in the OP)

Now I'm confused... I thought the AAKS was the black, but alas... appears to be the AALS. I need to buy more W/D Drives.

[TimoneX]

WD6401aals is black 640GB and WD1001fals is 1TB black. I originally planned 4x1TB blacks in RAID 5, but when the 640s went on sale for a day or two they were cheaper than the 500's so I snagged one. Now I kinda want to get 5 more and play with RAID 50 on the Adaptec 3805. Just waitin' for another sale. :)

I ignore the 500 & 750GB shortstroked drives and only consider the 640's & 1TBs. Also at $69.99 inc. shipping the 640 had the best $/GB ratio of the black line at $.109/GB making it kind of a no-brainer, though the premium on the 3 platter 1TB drive isn't hard to swallow.

I believe AAKS was re-designated blue.

[fritzman]

Thanks for that... I gotta get out more.

[neonblingbling]

Is the new 7200.12 Seagate a 1 platter 500GB drive? I thought I heard that somewhere, but I'm not positive.

[deathman20]

Is the new 7200.12 Seagate a 1 platter 500GB drive? I thought I heard that somewhere, but I'm not positive.

Yeah heard that as well don't think I'd chance that currently with all the issues with the current drives right now :( Sad love my Seagate drives for the past few years too.

[TimoneX]

Is the new 7200.12 Seagate a 1 platter 500GB drive? I thought I heard that somewhere, but I'm not positive.

Yes it is. Steering clear till there are more out in the wild and more sku's. Haven't seen any 7200.12's save the 500GB model. There are spec sheets available for 1TB & 1.5TB 2 & 3 platter models, but they're not available in the states to my knowledge. It appears as though Seagate is waiting till the supply of 7200.11 drives clear the sales channel. Doesn't help that there are so many problems with the drives. Hopefully the 7200.12's will be free of these issues.

[laughingcow]

I actually took the bait and bought 4 of the 500 GB 7200.12 drives. I installed them in a test rig. The 'egg packed them well. All four were fully functional out of the box. I set them up on the ICH10R on my IP35 box. Carved out an 820 GB 1+0 and a 200 GB RAID 0. Server 2008 installed relatively quickly. There's a stress tool from Microsoft called sqliosim I ran for 3x48 hr tests writing to both partitions. So far, no crashes, no drive errors. Externally measured temps of the drives using a laser thermometer have not shown anything over 95 F. Drives have been surprisingly quiet, but I'm getting older and probably starting to lose hearing at higher frequencies...:)

Any suggestions for other ways to hammer the drives? I'd like to do a comparison using HDTune between a split config like I have (RAID 1+0 and RAID 0 on the same drives) and then rebuild the box using just a RAID 1+0 and see if there's any appreciable difference. I know the bench numbers don't always tell a whole lot, but it's better than nothing.

[fritzman]

Nice sounding setup... Just a question on your raid setup... did you create the raid0 slice 1st? The way you have written it up, it sounds like you might have done the Raid10 1st, which would mean it would have the fastest part of the drive instead of the other way round.

[deathman20]

Well getting my drives today I think. I'll get to enjoy them once I figure out what issue I have with my PC in general.

My goal is to have a 200-240Gig Raid 0 and then what ever is remaining as a Raid 1.

[laughingcow]

Fritzmann, you're absolutely right...I realized that little problem when I was halfway into my second test run that I had gakked my creation sequence. I was hoping no one would notice...:) I'm gonne rebuild this a couple of times anyway, so when i do the actual bench runs, I'll make sure I get that right in the build process.

[TimoneX]

Well getting my drives today I think. I'll get to enjoy them once I figure out what issue I have with my PC in general.

My goal is to have a 200-240Gig Raid 0 and then what ever is remaining as a Raid 1.

Nice. The WD drives are great performers for the $$$. Post up some numbers when you're done.

[fritzman]

Fritzmann, you're absolutely right...I realized that little problem when I was halfway into my second test run that I had gakked my creation sequence. I was hoping no one would notice...:) I'm gonne rebuild this a couple of times anyway, so when i do the actual bench runs, I'll make sure I get that right in the build process.

That's so funny... glad you'll get it sorted. Actually the results will be interesting compared to the way you presently have them.

B

[laughingcow]

Okay, I finally had some time last night and this morning to run through some benchmarking numbers. To refresh, this is using 4 newly released Seagate 500 GB 7200.12 drives on an IP35 mobo, 4 GB RAM and an e4300 proc. The point of all this was to look for any expected/unexpected behavior from the different RAID configs.

I tried 4 different configurations on the matrix array controller:

1. RAID 1+0 on first array, RAID 0 on second array
2. RAID 0 on first array, RAID 1+0 on second array
3. RAID 1+0 as only array
4. RAID 0 as only array

In all cases, I used Server 2008 Standard as the Os of choice, installed on the first array in each scenario. The RAID 0 stripe always went across all 4 spindles. I'm just going to post the basic HD Tune benchmark numbers in this.

Scenario 1:

HD Tune Pro: Intel Raid 1 Volume Benchmark

Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 95.3 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 249.3 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 196.8 MB/sec
Access Time : 11.2 ms
Burst Rate : 115.9 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 14.7%


HD Tune Pro: Intel Raid 0 Volume Benchmark

Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 144.4 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 228.0 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 203.4 MB/sec
Access Time : 9.3 ms
Burst Rate : 118.6 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 11.4%


Scenario 2:

HD Tune Pro: Intel Raid 1 Volume Benchmark

Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 105.6 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 236.3 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 189.2 MB/sec
Access Time : 11.8 ms
Burst Rate : 117.1 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 12.3%

HD Tune Pro: Intel Raid 0 Volume Benchmark

Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 132.5 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 234.9 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 208.7 MB/sec
Access Time : 8.7 ms
Burst Rate : 117.1 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 11.3%

Scenario 3:


HD Tune Pro: Intel Raid 1 Volume Benchmark

Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 116.3 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 241.3 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 194.9 MB/sec
Access Time : 12.4 ms
Burst Rate : 118.1 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 13.6%

Scrnario 4:


Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 46.5 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 238.0 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 204.6 MB/sec
Access Time : 11.6 ms
Burst Rate : 115.9 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 14.4%


This looks consistent with what fritzman suggested we'd see: any variance in performance comes from whether the partition is closest to the outer or inner portions of the drives. From my perspective, I think I'll be happy using the configuration outlined in Scenario 2. I just have to decide if I'm willing to risk the OS install on the RAID0 stripe, or if I'll put the OS and data on the RAID 10, and just install program files and swap file on the stripe. Anyway, if I left stuff out (which I'm sure I did) feel free to ask or comment. Hope these numbers help someone else if they're thinking about these drives. So far they have been quiet and cool, and I haven't had any crashes under load or normal usage.

[deathman20]

The CPU usage on that seems quiet high, as well as the burst rate seems very low (should be upwards of 2.5Gig. You might have more performance in there.

[deathman20]

What would be a good strap size to use? Currently was using a 64kb on my OS and 128kb on my storage/some more game install drive. Would using a smaller amount be ideal?

First drive will be OS/Games/Apps (200-240Gig) (Raid 0)
Second drive will be Storage/some Games (~500Gig (Raid 1)

[TimoneX]

I would stick with 128k on ICH.

[laughingcow]

Deathman, my primary rig where I want to install these has an Abit IP35 pro and a Q9550. I haven't played around enough with the ICH10R, but will the faster proc make a significant diff? Also, I need to check on these drives and make sure I'm running at 3.0 Gb...on the old models there was that jumper you had to pull. there's no jumpers on these, but my assumption is that default setting is for 3.0...I should verify that from Seagate. Are there other settings I should be tweaking on this? I mean, I can muck around with stripe size too. I need to do some forum searched for ICH10 config guides and see what I'm missing...

[deathman20]

Well I did get her up and running last night. I think im overloading the controller partially right now since I have my old 320's hooked up in Raid 0's trying to get information off them and onto my new 640's.

Anyways performance wise.. I do have pics of it so just going off the top of my head til I finish the rest of the driver installs.

Raid 0 Primary (128kb stripe, under 2% CPU usage)
240Gig Partition
8.9ms seek
Average ~224MB/s

Raid 1 Storage (under 2% CPU usage)
~480Gig Partition
~11ms seek (little high but still good)
Average ~95MB/s (high is around 120 and low is 65)
Reads off the drive are great and can get upwards of 180MB/s from what I saw, writes on file transfers have been anywhere from 90MB/s to 40MB/s (averaging around 50MB/s). This is where im guessing that im really pounding the controller with the other drives on the channel. I still have a bit more data to get off (roughly 100Gig if not mistake) and then I should be yanking the other controller.


Deathman, my primary rig where I want to install these has an Abit IP35 pro and a Q9550. I haven't played around enough with the ICH10R, but will the faster proc make a significant diff? Also, I need to check on these drives and make sure I'm running at 3.0 Gb...on the old models there was that jumper you had to pull. there's no jumpers on these, but my assumption is that default setting is for 3.0...I should verify that from Seagate. Are there other settings I should be tweaking on this? I mean, I can muck around with stripe size too. I need to do some forum searched for ICH10 config guides and see what I'm missing...

I have no idea of the faster CPU will make a difference, but I really don't think so. All I know is before I was around 190-205MB/s on my 320Gigs with raid 0 (150Gig Partition) on my old controller for my primary on an E8400 @ 4Ghz. Really even if its just using SATA 1.5 there won't be any performance difference since your not going to go over 150Megs a sec with these drives. Only other thing I touch is that I turn on the Cache system.

[laughingcow]

Gotcha. I'm re-running some builds using XP SP2 and trying to see if there might be a controller driver issue somewhere here as well. It may just be the drives, tho. :)

I should clarify before I get lit up...there are pins on the drive, but there are no jumpers across any of them. On past Seagate models, the absence of the jumper meant 3.0 GB transfer setting. I need to verify that the setting is correct for this model.

[laughingcow]

Definitely a difference with a newer chipset driver. Okay, so for starters, I was under the false belief that this mobo came with an ICH10R...incorrect. It's actually an ICH9R. That doesn't make a heap of difference with respect to the fact that my Intel chipset driver package was an older version. I tracked down what is (I think) the latest drivers from Intel's website. With a XP SP2 installed on the RAID0 and a RAID 10 on the rest, I got the following numbers:

HD Tune Pro: Intel Raid 0 Volume Benchmark

Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 204.2 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 329.2 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 260.0 MB/sec
Access Time : 8.4 ms
Burst Rate : 126.4 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 8.8%

HD Tune Pro: Intel Raid 1 Volume Benchmark

Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 111.5 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 238.4 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 192.7 MB/sec
Access Time : 12.2 ms
Burst Rate : 170.2 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 12.3%


HD Tach on the RAID 0 produced:

Burst Speed of 343.4 MB/s
Average Read of 258.1 MB/s

HD Tach on the RAID 10 produced:

Burst Speed of 336.4 MB/s
Average Read of 205.7 MB/s


So definitely better numbers on the RAID0.