IOMeter
With such an odd showing of results from HDTach, we needed another synthetic benchmark to examine these drives. We used four configurations for IOMeter test - 100 % Sequential Read / Write and !00% Random Read / Write. This should give us an idea of what peak performance these drives can offer. The results are in the tables below. the first group of results are for reads and the second are for writes.
| Sequential -100% | ||
| Read |
Read IO/s | Read MB/s |
| Deskstar array | 3063.15 | 95.72 |
| Diamondmax array | 6639.32 | 103.74 |
| Deskstar single | 2325.19 | 72.66 |
| Diamondmax single | 1807.57 | 56.49 |
| Write |
Write IO/s | Write MB/s |
| Deskstar array | 3738.3 | 116.82 |
| Diamondmax array | 5679.23 | 88.74 |
| Deskstar single | 2314.38 | 72.32 |
| Diamondmax single | 1828.36 | 57.14 |
| Sequential -100% | |||
| Read |
Average Response Time | Maximum Response Time | % CPU Utilization |
| Deskstar array | 0.33 | 16.85 | 8.81 |
| Diamondmax array | 0.15 | 10.12 | 13.18 |
| Deskstar single | 0.43 | 17.06 | 3.44 |
| Diamondmax single | 0.55 | 167.67 | 4.42 |
| Write |
Average Response Time | Maximum Response Time | % CPU Utilization |
| Deskstar array | 0.27 | 1.9 | 7.01 |
| Diamondmax array | 0.18 | 8.18 | 9.2 |
| Deskstar single | 0.43 | 10.27 | 3.85 |
| Diamondmax single | 0.55 | 17.16 | 2.97 |
You'll no doubt notice the results from IOMeter are different than HDTach save for CPU utilization. Results are generally higher here, but it's relatively pretty close. As a single drive, the Hitachi Deskstar is again the better drive by a significant margin. Both in average read and write, the Hitachi Deskstar 7K160 is faster by almost 50% than DiamondMax 10. No doubt, the drive's support for SATA II allows it to maintain the same CPU utilization and average response time, with lower maximum response time. That in means higher I/O operations and that means higher transfer rate for both read and write. However, once we use them in a stripe array, the same odd thing we saw with HDTach rears its head again. The Hitachi Deskstar is actually beaten in average read speed, though it's faster in average write.
| Random – 100% | ||
| Read |
Read IO/s | Read MB/s |
| Deskstar array | 69.2 | 2.16 |
| Diamondmax array | 68.73 | 1.07 |
| Deskstar single | 71.94 | 2.25 |
| Diamondmax single | 67.14 | 2.1 |
| Write |
Write IO/s | Write MB/s |
| Deskstar array | 159.87 | 5 |
| Diamondmax array | 164.38 | 2.57 |
| Deskstar single | 112.33 | 3.51 |
| Diamondmax single | 96.46 | 3.01 |
| Random – 100% | |||
| Read |
Average Response Time | Maximum Response Time | % CPU Utilization |
| Deskstar array | 14.45 | 25.68 | 0.48 |
| Diamondmax array | 14.55 | 27.09 | 0.26 |
| Deskstar single | 13.9 | 29.69 | 0.47 |
| Diamondmax single | 14.89 | 30.65 | 0.32 |
| Write |
Average Response Time | Maximum Response Time | % CPU Utilization |
| Deskstar array | 6.25 | 116.54 | 0.58 |
| Diamondmax array | 6.08 | 36.93 | 0.36 |
| Deskstar single | 8.9 | 269.15 | 0.57 |
| Diamondmax single | 10.37 | 37.22 | 0.28 |
In this synthetic 100 % random test, we're not really looking at transfer rate - we're focusing on I/O operations and access times. The Hitachi Deskstar manages a slightly higher I/O operations per second, mostly because of lower average response times. It does have a higher CPU utilization in both random read and write - almost twice in write in fact. It also has a very high maximum response time with random reads, but that's not that bad since it still manage a very respective lower average response time overall. In a RAID 0 configuration, the Hitachi Deskstar and Maxtor DiamondMax 10 are evenly matched, though the DiamondMax 10 have an advantage because of its lower CPU utilization.
These results are a little confusing to say the least. However, there's is a trend we can spot from these results. Overall, as a single drive the Hitachi Deskstar 7K160 is fast and definitely better than our current staple hard drive, the Maxtor DiamondMax 10. All the statistics are better - transfer rates, access time and CPU utilization for both read and write. Put two of these drives into a RAID array, you still have better read performance overall, but not necessarily so for write operations.
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