by Alexey Volkov , Nikita Nikolaichev
01/20/2005 | 06:01 PM
The Serial ATA interface has recently arrived to the realm of hard disk drives of the 2.5” form-factor.
<%BANNER[article]%>Actually, we had expected the introduction of this interface would be more aggressive there, as notebooks are exactly the type of computer that would enjoy the small connectors and simple wiring of Serial ATA. Intel, the industry locomotion, must be the reason for this slow progress since it hasn’t yet released its notebook chipsets with support of SATA.
Anyway some manufacturer dared produce drives with the fashionable interface and, however strange it may seem, these drives do find their customer. So, our today’s test session does make sense!
We’ve got nine drives from five manufacturers: two drives from each Hitachi and Seagate, one drive from each Samsung and Toshiba, and three drives from Fujitsu. The basic technical characteristics of the devices are presented in the tables below:
The DK23FB model is one of the two drives in this review to use two platters to achieve the capacity of 40 gigabyte. This fact alone suggests that the drive is close to being obsolete.
The 5K80, on the contrary, is rather young. Moreover, this series has been recently “reinforced from above” by a 100GB model, but it is not that giant, but a modest and widespread 40GB model that will take part in our today’s tests.
Samsung is represented with an MP0402H drive from the SpinPoint M40 family. The drive uses one platter and two heads; its cache buffer is 8 megabytes big.
The 4026GAX drive from Toshiba is remarkable for having the biggest buffer among the test participants – 16 megabytes!
Seagate puts forth two drives from the Momentus 5400.1 family. Both models (ST94811A and ST94011A) should be known to you by our earlier reviews, so we just want to remind you the main difference between them: the ST94811A comes with 8 megabytes of cache memory, and the ST94011A with only 2 megabytes.
Fujitsu is going to be the dark horse of this competition as it is this company that dared begin to produce 2.5” Serial ATA devices. This policy of running ahead of the times may help them keep their market share, but some quite a big risk is involved in the process. :)
The MHS2040T model is presented as an ATA drive on the manufacturer’s website and we don’t really know why the sample we got had the Serial ATA interface. It must be an engineering sample, because the idea of equipping an initially weak drive (4200rpm spindle speed among other things) with a fast interface can only be regarded as a very brave experiment. :)
We tested the drives on the following testbed:
We attached the ATA drives via an adapter to a Promise Ultra133 TX2 controller (BIOS 2.20.0.14 and driver 2.0.0.29). The SATA drives were attached to a Promise SATA150 TX2 plus controller (BIOS 1.00.033 and driver 1.0.0.27).
The versions of the drives’ firmware are listed below:
We used the following benchmarks:
For WinBench tests we partitioned the drives in FAT32 and NTFS as one logical volume with the default size of the cluster (we use Paragon Partition Manager for FAT32 partitioning). Then we ran each test seven times and chalked up the best result. The HDDs didn’t cool down between the tests. For FC-Test we divided the drives into two logical volumes, 20GB each. In IOMeter tests we used Sequential Read, Sequential Write and Workstation patterns. For details about the patterns you can refer to our previous reviews.
IOMeter is a traditional opener of our test program. We use this utility to determine the “low-level” read and write speed of the drive in Sequential Read and Write patterns. Besides that, we use a Workstation pattern to check out the efficiency of the disk subsystem under a load typical for a workstation.
IOMeter is sending a stream of read/write requests to the disk, the queue length equaling four requests. Every minute the size of the data block changes, so in the end we get a dependence of the linear read (write) speed of the drive on the size of the processed data block.
Red marks the worst results, blue marks the best.
The Toshiba 4026GAX is the best with data chunks up to 4KB inclusive, its speed being well above all expectations, but it is overtaken by the Hitachi HDS548040M9AT00 at 8KB blocks.
The two SATA drives from Fujitsu have acted up, too. The MHT2040BH model handles small data blocks (up to 4KB) rather badly, while the MHT2040AT is the worst of all at reading 8KB and larger blocks (that’s expectable, though, as it has a lower spindle rotational speed than the others, 4200rpm).
It wouldn’t do putting the results of all the drives into a single diagram, so we divided them in groups according to the manufacturer. You can view the graphs by the following links:
Let’s see if things are different at writing.
Fujitsu’s drives have gathered almost all worst results here, again. Unlike at reading, the MHT2040AH is the worst with small blocks now. The Toshiba 4026GAX has the highest write speed on small data chunks – linear access in small data blocks seems to be a strong point of this drive.
The Hitachi HTS548040M9AT00, although couldn’t show a good speed with small data blocks, takes the first place on large blocks (above 8KB) like in the previous, reading test.
The diagrams can be viewed by the following links:
Like earlier, red marks the worst results, and blue marks the best.
We compare the performance of the drives by calculating their performance ratings with the following formula:
Performance = 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 + Total I/O (queue=32)/32
A disk subsystem made of Seagate’s drives would be the most efficient. They are closely followed by the two drives from Fujitsu. The 4200rpm MHT2040AT from Fujitsu quite expectedly delivers the lowest performance in this test.
Note that Fujitsu’s ATA drive is slightly faster than its SATA mate.
We use WinBench to check the drives in a “desktop computer” simulation. We format the drive in NTFS with the OS’s tools (leaving the cluster size default, i.e. 4 kilobytes) and in FAT32 with Paragon Partition Manager (32KB cluster).
First let’s examine the results of the tests which don’t depend on the file system, as they measure the physical characteristics of the drives.
The Seagate ST94811A boasts the best “average access time”, while the Seagate ST94011A is second. The rest of the drives are more than 1 millisecond behind in this parameter.
The results of this test depend on the areal density of the platters.
The Hitachi HTS548040M9T00 has the maximum speed on the first tracks, and the Hitachi DK23FB – on the last tracks (this model has two platters, which leads to a high speed at the “end” of the disk).
The Fujitsu MHS2040AT with its low rotational speed and two low-density platters can’t compete with the other drives.
WinBench 99 also allows taking down data-transfer speed graphs for each drive, which you can view by the following links:
Now let’s examine the results of the drives in two subtests (Business Disk Winmark and High-End Disk Winmark) in FAT32.
Click to enlarge
The Fujitsu MHT2040BH has the highest High-End Disk Winmark score, while the Seagate ST94811A is the best in Business Disk Winmark. Both hard disk drives with a 2MB cache buffer took the last two lines in the table of results.
Next go the numbers for the NTFS file system:
Click to enlarge
The leader is different: the Seagate ST94811A has got the best scores in both High-End and Business Disk Winmark subtests. We should acknowledge, though, that the Fujitsu MHT2040BH has the same result as the winner in High-End Disk Winmark. The Fujitsu MHS2040AT is again the slowest device.
You can examine the WinBench results in more detail here.
File Copy Test is the most interesting part of our test program.
We use this utility according to our standard methodology: we create two logical volumes, 20 gigabytes each. Then we create a set of files on the first partition and read it from the disk and then copy it into a folder on the same first partition (copy near) and then on the other partition (copy far). We use five file sets in total:
Let’s first see what we have in NTFS:
The following diagram shows the speed of creation (i.e. writing) of the Install pattern:
The Seagate ST94811A finds it easy to create the files of this pattern; the Samsung MP0402H is also good in this task.
Four drives from different manufacturers have almost the same speed when creating ISO-type files. Only Fujitsu’s drives don’t seem to like large files.
The Samsung MP0402H took the least time to create the MP3 and Programs patterns, but this drive was only fourth with the Windows files. The Fujitsu MHS2040AT is the worst drive for creating files, irrespective of their average size.
Next goes the read operation. Here’s the table:
And the diagrams:
The Hitachi HTS548040M9AT00 reads the Install pattern at the highest speed. The other drive from Hitachi, the DK23FB model, keeps up this family tradition, being quite good in this test, too.
The advantage of the Hitachi HTS548040M9AT00 is even more conspicuous in the ISO pattern. The Toshiba 4026GAX offered some competition to the Hitachi duo, leaving behind the drives from Fujitsu, Samsung and Seagate.
The drives from Hitachi couldn’t keep their leadership, yielding it to the Fujitsu MHT2040AH. Another Fujitsu, the MHT2040BH model, took the third place.
The Hitachi team is again the best when reading files of the Programs and Windows patterns.
Next we will measure the speed of copying files within the same partition.
The Hitachi HTS548040M9T00 does such copying best of all, with the Install files.
The Samsung MP0402H pushed the Hitachi HTS548040M9T00 one step lower in the ISO pattern, which consists of three large files. The Seagate ST94811A occupies the third step of the podium.
Copying files of a smaller size the Samsung MP0402H couldn’t keep its leading position, giving it back to the indefatigable HTS548040M9T00 from Hitachi.
The Seagate ST94811A had the upper hand on even smaller files, while the Hitachi HTS548040M9T00, the fastest drive in linear read speed, fell behind, allowing the two Fujitsu devices to come ahead.
The last action of the test is copying files between two partitions.
The Samsung MP0402H is the fastest drive when copying the Install pattern from one partition to another. It is closely followed by the Hitachi HTS548040M9AT00 and by both 5400rpm Fujitsu drives.
There’s a big gap between the five leaders and the four outsiders. It’s rather sad to see such a low performance of the Toshiba 4026GAX. Having 16 megabytes of cache memory on board, it could have made a better use of it. :(
The Samsung has an even bigger advantage over the rest when processing large files. Mark also the success of the Seagate which has pushed down a couple of Fujitsu drive.
The Samsung is a little slower than the Seagate ST94811A with files of the Programs pattern, while the Hitachi HTS548040M9AT00 is the fastest device to copy files of the MP3 and Windows patterns.
That’s all for the NTFS file system. The results in FAT32 don’t differ much from what we have seen in NTFS, so we don’t think it necessary to discuss them at length. A few points will suffice:
The speeds of the hard disk drives are higher in FAT32, especially when they are copying small files like those the Programs and Windows patterns consist of.
The Samsung MP0402H feels more confident in FAT32 than in NTFS, and the Seagate ST94811A – vice versa. Save for these facts, the overall picture is the same.
You can see the results of FC-Test and view the diagrams for the FAT32 file system here.
Now we’ll try to do some summarizing.
Fujitsu’s drives didn’t show anything extraordinary during our today’s tests. They are sturdy folk, but no record-breakers. The SATA electronics doesn’t endow them with any extra strength. At least today we see no difference between ATA and SATA drives for notebooks as concerns performance.
Our tests also show that there’s near parity in the market between products of the leading manufacturers. Let’s wait a little for a qualitative breakthrough or a next round of the race. :)