Web-Server, Fileserver and Workstation Patterns

The drives are tested under loads typical of servers and workstations.

The names of the patterns are self-explanatory. The Workstation pattern is used with the full capacity of the drive as well as with a 32GB partition. The request queue is limited to 32 requests in the Workstation pattern.

The results are presented as performance ratings. For the File-Server and Web-Server patterns the performance rating is the average speed of the drive under every load. For the Workstation pattern we use the following formula:

Rating (Workstation) = Total I/O (queue=1)/1 + Total I/O (queue=2)/2 + Total I/O (queue=4)/4 + Total I/O (queue=8)/8 + Total I/O (queue=16)/16.

• IOMeter: File-Server
• IOMeter: Web-Server
• IOMeter: Workstation
• IOMeter: Workstation, 32GB

Thanks to its low read response time and effective request reordering, the Western Digital Scorpio Black has no rivals as a disk subsystem of a server processing read requests only. On the other hand, the new Seagate 7200.3 is not bad, either. It is better than its predecessor thanks to the lack of a slump under medium loads.

The overall ratings suggest that 2.5-inch drives are obviously superior to 3.5-inch ones at read operations if their spindle rotation speed is the same. And 5400rpm 2.5-inchers are about as fast as 7200rpm 3.5-inchers at such usage.

The addition of write requests leads to interesting changes. The Scorpio Black is still unrivalled but the Scorpio Blue unexpectedly takes second place. Thanks to efficient deferred writing and high recording density this HDD leaves behind the host of the HDDs with faster platters. The weak deferred writing of the Seagate 7200.3 can be seen here: it is slower than its predecessor and, actually, than nearly every of its opponents.

The Western Digital Scorpio is superior again. Basing on this and previous test, it can be recommended for owners of slim servers who are going to build a disk subsystem out of inexpensive 2.5-inch SATA drives.

The Scorpio Black gives way to the Seagate 7200.2 under the Workstation load. The Seagate 7200.3 is slower and competes with the WD Scorpio Blue only.

Take note that the 3.5-inch drives take last places here. Perhaps the PCMark tests will produce a different picture, but the 2.5-inch models are so far better than their 3.5-inch counterparts, being only inferior in terms of top speed at sequential operations.

The HDDs get close to each other when the test zone is limited to 32 gigabytes. The Seagate 7200.11 stands out among the others with its surprisingly high performance (probably due to the high data-transfer rate at the beginning of the disk we have observed above).

Interestingly, the Seagate 7200.3 is somewhat slower than the rather old Momentus 7200.2. High recording density is good, but firmware algorithms must not be neglected, either.