X-bit labs

300GB Storage Devices: Which One is Better? (page 6)

Category: Storage

by Andrey Kuznetcov

[ 06/08/2004 | 02:53 PM ]

Performance in Intel IOMeter Sequential Read & Write Patterns

The test of sequential reading and writing checks out the drive’s ability to process ordered requests with linearly increasing addresses. The request queue depth remains at 4; the size of the requested data block is changed once every minute.

Regrettably, the drive in the STLab container couldn’t pass the IOMeter tests, so we have only three results instead of five. We suspect the USB-IDE/FireWire-IDE controller employed in this case is not very perfect.

Sequential reading comes first. The diagram says there are no surprises: the Maxtor MaXLine II 5A300J0 shows its maximum speed only working via Ultra ATA. From 4KB data chunks on, its graph becomes a flat line, indicating that the drive has reached its speed limit. The results of the Maxtor OneTouch B14D300 are much lower. The transfer lines reflecting the speeds through FireWire and USB 2.0 are rising very slow; the maximum read speed is below 40MB/s with FireWire and a little higher than 32MB/s with USB 2.0.

The Maxtor 5A300J0 takes its deserved first place in this sequential writing test: it draws a graph that is similar-shaped to the one we saw in the previous test. The speed is also nearly the same. The Maxtor B14D300 is now slower than in the Sequential Read pattern, irrespective of the interface. The transfer lines are going up very slow in the diagram, but FireWire seems preferable to USB 2.0 again. This time, however, the difference between the two interfaces is small.