The next pattern to check is the longest and the most informative one. It imitates the work with the SQL database. The block size is 8KB, the share of write and read operation varies, as well as the disk subsystem workload.

The results obtained in this pattern are very illustrative. For example, they tell us how well the drives cope with the access to random data blocks.

The fastest here is the drive from IBM, then comes the “old” Maxtor with the same platter configuration, and then comes Seagate’s HDD. The remaining two drives had a much harder time than the three leaders: they had to move their heads at a longer distance. Nevertheless, we could compare them with one another, especially, since this is exactly why we included 6Y060L0 HDD in this test session.

The average access time when reading data blocks of the average size didn’t get any worse, but when writing these blocks it has become much better. And the ratio between the average access time during reads to that during writes shows how well the drive can accumulate and optimize the write requests, i.e. it characterizes the lazy write efficiency in a quantitative way.

This diagram proves my point about SoundForge results mentioned above: the new firmware of the new Maxtor drive has become much smarter and turned out the best among our today’s testing participants. Strange as it might seem, but Seagate’s drive won the second prize, and the very last one in this race appeared IBM. To tell the truth, this situation is not typical at all for IBM products, other models from the same family usually performed lazy writes as efficiently, as the new Maxtor.

Now let’s have a look at the firmware of the drives tested. Since the picture was almost the same for the workload of 1 and 4 simultaneous requests, I decided to show just a few most illustrative diagrams.

IBM drive stands out s lot among these drives due to its very characteristic curl. In case of low writes share it is ahead, but then it yields to Barracuda ATA V and the “old” Maxtor DiamondPlus 9. The new 6Y080L0 outperforms both of them when the writes share grows big.

The higher gets the workload, the more diverse become the performance curves of the tested drives.

Ahead of all is IBM. Seagate is its closest competitor. Then comes the new incarnation of Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 6Y080L0 and in the very end go the Maxtor drives with the older firmware version. It is interesting that although the old 6Y080L0 boasted better average access time, it got completely defeated by its successor. We really felt sorry for it during the test. Maybe this drive is too raw and needs some time to run in, as we have already mentioned above.