[-JJ-]

I just switched from WD640AAKS x2 RAID 0 to WD6401AALS x2 RAID 0, and here are the results - AAKS vs AALS

System specs on which I ran HD Tach 3.0.4.0 long bench 32mb test un HD Tune 2.54 default test. I run all benches using the same exact OS image

MOBO: Asus P5K-E WIFI-AP (v.1006 bios)
CPU: C2D E8200 (Q744A860) @4,00ghz (1,353v vcore) cooled by TT BT
RAM: 2x1GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 @1200Mhz (PC2-6400, D9GMH)
HDD: WD6400AAKS x 2 (RAID 0) / WD6401AALS x 2 (RAID 0)
VGA: ASUS RADEON HD4870 (1GB) cooled by TRAD2
SOUND: Creative SOUND BLASTER X-Fi Xtreme Music
PSU: Zalman ZM850-HP


WD6400AAKS x 2 RAID 0 HD Tune 2.54


VS

WD6401AALS x 2 RAID 0 HD Tune 2.54



WD6400AAKS x 2 RAID 0 HD Tach 3.0.4.0


VS

WD6401AALS x 2 RAID 0 HD Tach 3.0.4.0


GENERAL REMARKS:

Unrar(ing) large archives takes even less time. Boot time with AAKS after fresh OS install (using image created with acronis true image) was around 12,5 sec., with AALS boot time after fresh OS install (using the same image as previously) was @10,3sec. Boot time was measured with Bootvis - Trace - Next boot + drivers delays. I clearly noticed that with AALS the hdd starts spinning much earlier in the boot process than AAKS.


StableTrac™ - The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during read and write operations.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Probably StableTrac is the reason why AALS is so god damn quite!!!

Furthermore I noticed that read speed stayed unaffected, eventhough I was installing stuff at the same time and copying data from external hdd. Not sure whether its due to the bigger cache or to the new invented dual processor technology..

[Blazing fire]

Thanks for the benchmarks! What I find most useful was this:

Unrar(ing) large archives takes even less time. Boot time with AAKS after fresh OS install (using image created with acronis true image) was around 12,5 sec., with AALS boot time after fresh OS install (using the same image as previously) was @10,3sec. Boot time was measured with Bootvis - Trace - Next boot + drivers delays. I clearly noticed that with AALS the hdd starts spinning much earlier in the boot process than AAKS.

AALS's 32mb cache and StableTrac has indeed improve performance slightly.

[MR-FIX-IT]

RAID 0 all of those drives and watch your numbers come close to 500MB/s

[-JJ-]

Results from the same setup while using the matrix raid (allocated 150gb from each hdd to one 300gb partition):

2 x WD6401AALS in MATRIX RAID 0 (300gb) HD Tune 2.54


2 x WD6401AALS in MATRIX RAID 0 (300gb) HD Tach 3.0.4.0

[Paragonics]

Hiya guys. Was reading these 'ere forums and in particular this thread, and it persuaded me to buy a couple of the AALs and pop em in RAID as I was looking for something quick to load up apps.

I would imagine my specs are a little different to most of you so I thought I'd post up what my results are with my specific specs, in case they might make a bit of an interesting read (glance).

Sys specs are (yes I need to upgrade, waiting for the i7/amd war/price drop):

Opteron 165 @ 4400x2 speed
2x 1Gig DDR266 (250Mhz)
Motherboard: 939Dual-SATA2
WD6401AALS x 2 (RAID 0)
8800GTS 320Mb

And both drives are connected to SATA1, Onboard Raid Control.


HD Tune 2.55 results:
Transfer Rates:
Min 111.3
Max 145.7
Av 135.6

Access Time 11.6
Burst Rate 93.6Mbs
CPU usage 20.9%


Ran the tests a couple of times, seems to be consistent. I know speeds are limited by both SATA1 and my cpu/ram speeds, but I have a few Qs though;

1) Why's the burst rate so dramatically different from others on here? I mean 4000mbs vs 94?

2) In JJ's last post, he seems to get significantly higher Min Transfer Rate. So am I right in saying that if I partition off the drive, I can expect higher min Transfer Rates in general? Sorry if that's a stupid question or anything.

3) I assume my CPU usage of 21% vs the general 5% of others in this thread is purely down to me having a slower pc, and not any sorta tweaks or changing anything in the BIOS I mighta missed?

4) And lastly, in HD Tune: Info - I see this:
- "Standard ATA/ATAPI-8 - SATA II" --(I do have 1 SATAII port, tho I'm using both SATA1 ports)
- "Suppported UDMA Mode 6 (Ultra ATA/133)
- "Active UDMA Mode 6 (Ultra ATA/133)


Does anyone see anything wrong there at all?

Cheers,
- A

[hitokiri_808]

Wow those access times in Matrix Raid 0 is amazing.

I got 2 WD10EACSs sitting on my desk that's gonna go matrix in a few days. Won't have the same transfer or access times as those 640s though.

@Para, His burst rates are high because he got write caching and advanced performance enabled on the drive in vista or write back caching enabled in intel matrix raid. Keeping it enabled is a debated topic. If you loose power you might get data corruption etc. As for your transfer being a little lower, its probably the raid controller and/or stripe size.

[chad11779]

Thank you for this. Ive been waiting for this comparison.

[dja2k]

Sorry for being a bit stupid on this matter, but your first test was RAID0 2x640 = 1280GB , so then how does the "Results from the same setup while using the matrix raid (allocated 150gb from each hdd to one 300gb partition)" work? What total space does that give you? Not familiar with using Matrix Raid.

I thought I would want some SSD drives, but for price, I rather get two of these WD6401AALS drives or maybe two WD7501AALS since the price is only like $5 more.

dja2k

[MadMan007]

There's one interesting thing when comparing the 640GB Blue vs Black drive spec .pdf's on the WD site. The whole Blue line has a bit error rate of 1 in 10^15, the 500GB and 640GB Black are stated as 1 in 10^14 while the 750GB and 1TB Black are 1 in 10^15. Meaningful difference? I don't know, but it's strange that the Black line has different bit error rates.

[hitokiri_808]

Originally Posted by dja2k

I thought I would want some SSD drives, but for price, I rather get two of these WD6401AALS drives or maybe two WD7501AALS since the price is only like $5 more.
dja2k

I'm pretty sure those 750s are 3 platter drives, whereas the 640s are 2. Thats what makes the 640s preform better. My 2x 1TB greens are 4 platter and give me ~160MB average read and 10.4ms seek time. Thats with the first 200GB in a matrix stripe.

[dja2k]

Originally Posted by hitokiri_808

I'm pretty sure those 750s are 3 platter drives, whereas the 640s are 2. Thats what makes the 640s preform better. My 2x 1TB greens are 4 platter and give me ~160MB average read and 10.4ms seek time. Thats with the first 200GB in a matrix stripe.

Thanks for that info. I think I am going with two WD Carviar Black 640's then. Hopefully I will see a dramatic improvement over my 90 MB\s max that I get with my current RAID0 setup.

dja2k

[Joeteck]

I have 4 of the 250 gig seagate 410AS (Single platter) drives in Matrix RAID 0. I get 468MB/s continuous, which is great for my game load times. Too bad I'm a sole XP user, otherwise four 640 gig drives would be a sweet setup. Formatted capacity would be 2.385TB, which is just over the 2TB single volume limit.

http://www.ocforums.com/showpost.php...5&postcount=44

[dja2k]

I gotta ask this, in your personal honest opinion, since I didn't upgrade my drives earlier which I have the money now - would I benefit and see dramatic improvement over my current RAID0 config by buying two of those WD Carviar Black 640's to replace my current old RAID0 config?

dja2k

[tuskenraider]

Originally Posted by dja2k

I gotta ask this, in your personal honest opinion, since I didn't upgrade my drives earlier which I have the money now - would I benefit and see dramatic improvement over my current RAID0 config by buying two of those WD Carviar Black 640's to replace my current old RAID0 config?

dja2k

It'll be a noticeable improvement. Throughput will double.

[Amtrak]

Anyone have non-RAID 0AAKS vs. 1AALS benches?

[Blazing fire]

Good question. Judging by the benchmarks above, I'm very sure the 2AAKS will beat the single AALS by a significant margin.

[Rich'[ard]]

does Vista have Raid capabilities implemented into the OS? or is a RAID controller needed?

[hitokiri_808]

Vista does RAID 0 and 1 with dynamic disks, but you can't make a RAID 0 array your boot partition. Also you can't bench the array with hdtach or hd tune. Gotta use Sisoft Sandra file system benchmark.

[Paragonics]

Hey again, came across a little info that some might find interesting if they come by:

A NewEgg review of a single ALLS drive:




Lightning in a Bottle

Pros: Quiet
Cool
Lightning Fast

This drive is FASTER than my old WD Raptor WD1500ADFD and has the benchmark numbers from HD Tune 3.10 to prove it.

Vista Ultimate x64 SP1 (fresh install with all updates and drivers)
Intel D975XBX2 w/Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
FYI: this drive will format out to 596GB of usable space under NTFS

Minimum Transfer Rate
WD6401AALS: 59.4 MB/s
WD1500ADFD: 53.8 MB/s

Maximum Transfer Rate
WD6401AALS: 118.4 MB/s
WD1500ADFD: 83.9 MB/s

Average Transfer Rate
WD6401AALS: 98.0 MB/s
WD1500ADFD: 73.3 MB/s

Burst Transfer Rate
WD6401AALS: 125.4 MB/s
WD1500ADFD: 103.4 MB/s

From the end of my BIOS POST screen until I'm at my desktop with a functioning network connection is just over 40 seconds.
EXCELLENT!

Newegg now seems to be shipping this OEM drive wrapped in bubble wrap, so thank you Newegg for listening to your customers on how OEM drives should be shipped!

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: If you are looking for a very fast hard drive and don't have the budget for a Western Digital Velociraptor or a good SSD, then this drive is your only other rational choice.
This drive is much easier to live with than my previous second generation Raptor (quieter, cooler, and 4x the space) and feels just as fast, if not slightly faster.

This drive is a steal at this price point, so why not buy two?



Reviewed by "Jimmy"

[dja2k]

Anyone know if you can have 3 of these WD6401AALS in the same system, but only use 2 in RAID0 and the 3rd for storage? Will the ICH10R let you configure this?

Also so anyone know if these WD6401AALS have a 3 or 5 year warranty?

dja2k

[hitokiri_808]

All the blacks come with a 5 year. I think newegg didn't have it listed on the product page, but the warranty is listed on the WD site.

[MadMan007]

Originally Posted by Paragonics

Hey again, came across a little info that some might find interesting if they come by:

A NewEgg review of a single ALLS drive:

Lightning in a Bottle

{blah blah, benchmarks and stuff}

Reviewed by "Jimmy"

These drives DO perform nicely but when someone thinks HDTach/HDTune STR benchmark is the only thing that tells you a drive's real usage performance they don't know what they're talking about.

Originally Posted by dja2k

Anyone know if you can have 3 of these WD6401AALS in the same system, but only use 2 in RAID0 and the 3rd for storage? Will the ICH10R let you configure this?

Also so anyone know if these WD6401AALS have a 3 or 5 year warranty?

dja2k

Yes, you can configure the drives as you posted. You just select which drives to make part of the RAID array and any you don't select will just be regular drives.

[dja2k]

Originally Posted by hitokiri_808

All the blacks come with a 5 year. I think newegg didn't have it listed on the product page, but the warranty is listed on the WD site.

Thanks for clarifying that for me; yeah I asked because Newegg doesn't have it listed on there.

Originally Posted by MadMan007

Yes, you can configure the drives as you posted. You just select which drives to make part of the RAID array and any you don't select will just be regular drives.

Thanks! That's what I needed to verify before ordering 3 WD 640's.

dja2k

[MadMan007]

It's easy - you'll see when you have the drives and do ctrl+I to get in the RAID config menu.

[dja2k]

Would you benefit from setting up 3 WD 640's in a Matrix Raid like in the "How to set up a Matrix Raid array (with pictures)" thread? Or just use 2 in Raid0?

I am getting confused in my own thoughts on the idea of 3 vs 2 640's. I have 2 500gb externals that hold all my data as backup that I download to my main drives. So I still don't know if just setting up 2 640's in Matrix Raid0 is sufficient and I don't need any 3rd drive for storage because my externals provide that benefit.

dja2k

[Satsumomo]

I'm about to order 2 of these drives, but I've been reading around that you cannot make Vista boot off of a RAID 0 setup?

[MadMan007]

I don't know where you read that silliness but it's not true.

[Satsumomo]

Originally Posted by hitokiri_808

Vista does RAID 0 and 1 with dynamic disks, but you can't make a RAID 0 array your boot partition. Also you can't bench the array with hdtach or hd tune. Gotta use Sisoft Sandra file system benchmark.

So this is wrong? Or is my reading comprehension terrible

[MadMan007]

Perhaps that's referring to Vista's software RAID and not hardware-supported RAID like on a chipset or a dedicated controller.

[Satsumomo]

Oh I see... then I'm good Thanks