X-bit labs

Promise FastTrak TX4200 4-Port Serial ATA RAID Controller Review (page 10)

Category: Storage

by Alexey Volkov , Nikita Nikolaichev

[ 06/03/2005 | 02:43 PM ]

Performance in FC-Test NTFS File System

We stick to our traditional methodology of using FC-Test: we create two logical volumes, 32GB each, on the array and format them in NTFS and then in FAT32. We create a set of files on the first volume, and then this pattern is read from the array, then copied into a folder on the same partition (copy-near – inside one and the same logical volume), and finally copied onto another partition (copy-far).

The test system is rebooted between the tests to avoid the influence of the OS’s caching on the results. We use five file patterns here:

• Install (414 files, 575MB in total)
• ISO (three files, 1.6GB in total)
• MP3 (271 files, 1GB in total)
• Programs (8504 files, 1.4GB in total)
• Windows (9006 files, 1.06GB in total)

Let’s start with NTFS. We’re going to examine the results of each test action for each pattern independently due to the abundance of data we have received. The first action is the creation of a set of files on the array.

Take a look at the table of efficiency:

There’s little blue here. It is mostly at the bottom of the table.

Let’s examine the diagrams:

The TCQ mode seems to be a poor helper at creating files. Some speed growth is only observed with small files and only with many-disk arrays. And we suspect even this gain is not due to TCQ, either.