Flurry of Hard Drive Reviews 184
Sivar writes "After a long hiatus while setting up their new testbed, StorageReview.com has released a number of reviews of the latest hard drives, including Hitachi's Deskstar 7K500 which now occupies the top performance spot for desktop drives, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 which is the first shipping Serial ATA-II drive, the Seagate NL35 for backup servers and other "nearline" storage, and the Western Digital WD4000YR, which interestingly is actually based on their famous (and expensive) Raptor unit." Hitachi's SATA-II drive was also recently reviewed by BigBruin in case you missed it.
Bah (Score:5, Insightful)
Not quite there (Score:3, Informative)
Samsung will do it before anyone else. WD, Seagate and Hitachi don't have any flash business so they are not going to push for it.
Re:Not quite there (Score:2)
Re:Not quite there (Score:3, Informative)
80 MB/s transfer. $1900.
Brian
Re:Not quite there (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not quite there (Score:2)
Re:Bah (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want to pay 100x more per GB of storage, go right on ahead, I won't stop you, but I won't follow your trail either until the cost difference is a lot lower. Even with buying a second set of drives for off-line backup, mechanical drives are still a far better deal for mass storage.
Frankly, I've had not much of either failures or noise in the past five years, unless you are talking 8+ year old drives, but by then they a
Re:Bah (Score:2)
You're sick of mechanical breakdowns, so you want to replace it with something far less reliable, that will frequently have non-mechanical breakdowns.
Whaaa? Hard drives are getting much quieter each generation. My 7200RPM 40GB hard drive is extremely quiet. Even with just one very quiet fan in the system, you still wouldn't hear it (except for the inital spin-up). My 160GB hard drive is slightly quieter still, and yeh I a
Re:Bah (Score:2)
Re:Bah (Score:2)
Seagate's "nearline" drive (Score:5, Insightful)
So to cut through the jargon crap- in other words, someone finally remembered that RAID means Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, and that in most cases, when you've got 5 or more drives in an array, you don't need them to be 15,000 RPM?
Re:Seagate's "nearline" drive (Score:5, Informative)
RAID improves throughput, but not latency. If you need low latency, you need high-RPM drives and no amount of RAID will help you.
Re:Seagate's "nearline" drive (Score:4, Informative)
Argh! This myth needs to end.
The only case in which RAID does not improve latency is that of a single tasking system.
The latency that's important for a multitasking system is the time an application has to wait for its data, not the time it takes the disk to process a single request. The benefits vary depending an access patterns, array geometries and RAID level.
Having more drives simply means there's a better chance that some requests can be handled in parallel. Your claim is akin to saying that people won't have to wait longer at the supermarket checkout when only one lane is open.
Re:Seagate's "nearline" drive (Score:4, Informative)
It's not a myth.
It's not an absolute, either, I'll grant you - but it is an excellent rule of thumb.
The only case in which RAID does not improve latency is that of a single tasking system.
This is not correct. RAID *might* improve your latency if its purpose is very specific, the setup can be carefully tuned for the access patterns and the physical placement of data on the disks is predictable, but in general it won't.
The latency that's important for a multitasking system is the time an application has to wait for its data, not the time it takes the disk to process a single request.
I'm confused. How isn't the time a disk takes to process requests directly related to how quickly the data can get to the application, in the general case ?
Having more drives simply means there's a better chance that some requests can be handled in parallel.
Certainly, but the chances of it happening are very low. A higher RPM drive will give immediate, predictable and consistent improvements in access times. A RAID array *might*, some of the time, if you're lucky and the planets are correctly aligned - but on average it will actually make latency worse.
Your claim is akin to saying that people won't have to wait longer at the supermarket checkout when only one lane is open.
Your analogy sucks. Not only is the scenario of people being served at checkouts talking about completely independent operations, but that independence also allows for performance hotspots (ie: longer queues in a particular aisle) to be avoided. Accesses to a RAID array exhibit neither of these characteristics.
Re:Seagate's "nearline" drive (Score:2)
This is an absolute ideal scenario, and the only one (concerning a RAID1, at least) in which your claim is correct. I hope I don't have to tell you how unr
RAID 0 absolutely doensn't reduce latency... (Score:2)
You can do all the seeks in parallel, but without spinding locking, you're gonna need to wait longer (on average) for the sectors you need to rotate under the heads, because you're going to need every read to rotate under the heads, not just half of them.
This is very similar for any RAID other than 1. I mean, with RAID 4 or 5 you still need to bring virt
Re:Seagate's "nearline" drive (Score:2)
All of them? You started off by saying that I gave "the one" example of RAID reducing the overall latency of multiple reads.
I pointed out that you picked the one aspect where latency *might* be improved. There's typically a lot more to disk access than perfectly parallelisable disk reads.
I'm talking about *average* performance in the *general* case. On *average*, in *general*, RAID will increase latency. There are certainly examples of specific situations where this is not true, but that doesn't chan
Re:Seagate's "nearline" drive (Score:2)
Huh ? Perfectly balanced, parallelisable IO (as per your RAID1 and "checkout" examples) is about as "best case" as you can get when talking about RAID IO.
And you *are* treating it as a general case by saying such IO will be the rule, rather than the exception.
You're almost there.
Well, I'm starting to understand what you're trying to argue. That doesn't make it right with regard
RAID claims and reality (Score:2)
RAID improves latency, in a way (Score:2)
Re:cache memory (Score:2)
This does not change the fact that if you need low latency, RAID won't help you much, if at all, and is more likely to make the situation worse.
Re:Seagate's "nearline" drive (Score:5, Insightful)
RAID does not lower data access times. If you are running an application with lots of random disk accesses e.g. a database, you generally will not be helped by a RAID array in terms of performance unless you are maxing out disk throughput. As 15,000 RPM disks have lower access times, they are used for these sorts of applications. That is why companies are willing to pay outrageous sums for 15,000 RPM disks.
Re:Seagate's "nearline" drive (Score:2)
That's not strictly true. If you're running a mirror setup, then the odds of one of the drives being available to serve a random read request is better than in a single-drive setup. Put another way, if you have four drives and four processes reading from them, you could theoretically have a single drive dedicated to each process. The average latency would indeed by significantly lower than in a non-RAID system.
I know what you meant, and you were correct within th
inexpensive is relative... (Score:2)
The alternative to RAID was special rack-mount drives, like a Control Data Corporation SMD Sabre drive. These would cost $10K or something because they were special high-capacity units made to a higher reliability spec. Why not use a group of cheaper SCSI or ESDI drives meant for a workstation or even a PC? Since these were only $1K or something, you could put a few of them together in the right combinations to get the amount of storage with the rig
Re:Seagate's "nearline" drive (Score:2)
Anyone remember when a single gig drive cost 4 figures and was the size of your lunchbox? I do. Maybe I'm stuck in a different decade, but I think Raptors are pretty cheap and 74GB quite big...
Re:Seagate's "nearline" drive (Score:2)
If they're that big, I suppose you're right. I haven't bought a game in a few years. Don't play too much, don't download movies or anything so I actually have unpartitioned space on most of my drives.
Guess my screen name is appropriate.
Performance vs Noise (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Performance vs Noise (Score:3, Informative)
I know several Scottish folk who even use the chilly winter air to help cool their systems. That may not be an option for you, but if it is, go for it.
Re:Performance vs Noise (Score:2)
and the other factor is space. not everyones got room to dedicate to a closet. hell i need to find a Rack for a 6U server i have and you have NO idea how hard that is when you actualy try... it always more expensive when you actualy try it.
Re:Performance vs Noise (Score:2)
I know some other people who live in apartments, and they have put their servers/desktops under their kitchen counters. Now, most people have kitchens, even those living in apartments.
And if you can't find a suitable rack, build one. Get some wood, a saw, a few nails, a hammer, and you could be done within an hour.
Re:Performance vs Noise (Score:2)
it weighs 54 kilos standard, the average wood DIY rack aint gonna cut it for this baby.
Re:Performance vs Noise (Score:3, Interesting)
You obviously do not understand the strength of wood. A properly built server rack can easily handle a 54 kg system. Even the pre-fabricated wooden racks from your typical hardware store are more than sufficient. You can reinforce one of those, if you really feel it to be necessary.
Don't forget that houses are often built from wood. It's a very versatile and strong constru
Re:Performance vs Noise (Score:2)
Re:Performance vs Noise (Score:2)
And yes, as the above poster said, most houses are built of wood. Pretty much wherever corrosion and weight/bulk are not terribly large issues, wood is the material of choice because it's cheap, easy to work with, and more enviorm
Re:Performance vs Noise (Score:2)
Size vs. Noise (Score:3, Informative)
160GB per platter is just on the horizon and with newer TUMR heads expect that to go up to 250GB per platter in a year. I wouldn't hold my breath for perpendicular recording. It still seems to be a couple years
Re:Size vs. Noise (Score:2)
Re:Size vs. Noise (Score:2)
Seagate has 80GB platters that use perpendicular recording in their 160GB Momentus 5400.3 drives. Toshiba also has 40GB platters that use perpendicular recording in their 40GB MK4007GAL 1.8" drives.
Re:Performance vs Noise (Score:2)
That's pretty sad hyperbole. The loudest drive referenced in the 7K500 review is 45dB at 3mm, and that's the WD4000YR, and Western Digital seems to be known for the loudest drives.
In order to cause deafness, I think you'd need to be exposed to 90dB for a long duration, meaning you'd need to be near at least 15 of those drives, assuming you don't have any enclosures or accoustical treatments between you and the dr
Re:Performance vs Noise (Score:3, Funny)
People would probably pay a lot of money for the guaranteed ability to fart super silently, however.
--S
Re:Performance vs Noise (Score:2)
I just spent the last 2 weeks working in a computer room wearing earplugs due to OH&S regulations, because of the excessive noise in the room being generated by several high end disk subsystems.
5000 people farting simultaneously and continuously in an enclosed space could get a
When will we see RAM drives (Score:2, Interesting)
I really REALLY want a dependable, long-lasting, fast and ample-capacity RAM drive. No more spinning platters please.
Start by buying today's RAM drives. (Score:2)
Re:Start by buying today's RAM drives. (Score:2)
Re:Start by buying today's RAM drives. (Score:2)
Re:Start by buying today's RAM drives. (Score:2)
Re:When will we see RAM drives (Score:2)
Re:When will we see RAM drives (Score:3, Insightful)
--S
Noise? (Score:5, Insightful)
I care about reliability (gone down hill since 2000) and noise. I sense in the rush to devalue pc's into $399 emachines that quality is looked upon last in an effort to cut costs. Isn't there anyone buying anything besides junk anymore? I am not talking about servers either since scsi drives and cards are outrageously expensive.
Re:Noise? (Score:3, Interesting)
reliability: the cost of offshoring? (Score:3, Insightful)
2000, eh? That's about the end of the dot-com boom. So it fits, I guess...
Re:Noise? (Score:2)
Re:Noise? (Score:2)
Samsung Samsung Samsung (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is a goddamned shame, because they really are genuinely good drives (far better than the for-shit products Maxtor and WD are shoveling out these days), ones I buy in preference to any other vendor's. They've been extremely reliable for me and have a nice mix of performance characteristics.
I'm not a big fan of their self-reporting reliability database, and I can't hazard to guess why they're testing "desktop" performance in their Enterprise-I/O Xeon system... nor why they can't do any testing on *nix. But those are all are reasons why I have become frustrated with SR over the last few years.
I'm just one person. My opinions aren't going to mean shit to anyone here. But then, I'm one guy with around 12TB worth of Hitachi and Samsung drives keeping his apartment warm, so it's not like I don't have a little bit of experience with commodity hard disks.
Re:Samsung Samsung Samsung (Score:2)
Re:Samsung Samsung Samsung (Score:2)
I sorta-kinda built a system for managing a staggering amount of multimedia content + limited metadata, around the idea of having a great deal of disk space and lo and behold, I keep adding more.
I've got a pretty big library of stuff I've vidcapped - VHS movies that won't ever be made into DVDS, a lot of porn (it's fair to say that I have a fairly expansive definition of "a lot"), pictures I've snagged from online... It's all fo
WD has been great to me. (Score:2)
I've never been happy with Maxtor, ever since I first had problems with their 330MB and 660MB 5.25" drives back in 1988 ('89?). Their first 3.5" drive (200MB, I believe) was a loser too.
Re:WD has been great to me. (Score:2)
They're OK for you, great. Me? I like my data.
I like my data too (Score:2)
But no actually, it's been that I have had great experiences with WD over the past 5 years, basically since the Caviar series came around.
I've never had a Samsung drive. Nothing against them, just happen to have never had one.
Re:Samsung Samsung Samsung (Score:2)
In the meantime (quite a few years... that drive was from and old P133 system), i had a number of hard disks (Seagates, WDs, Maxtors) die on me regardless of being treated much, much nicer. Maybe i shou
re: WD and Maxtor, etc. (Score:3, Interesting)
Meanwhile, I was always a traditional supporter of both WD and Maxtor (because frankly, I used a lot of Seagates and always had crashes/failures with 'em), but the warranty situation today is CRAP!
1
Re: WD and Maxtor, etc. (Score:2)
Re:Samsung Samsung Samsung (Score:2)
Re:Samsung Samsung Samsung (Score:2)
Re:Samsung Samsung Samsung (Score:2)
Easy, it's statistics. Most people you talk to have dealt with a very small sample number of drives, maybe a dozen or so. If they get happen to get failures they think the brand is crap. If they happen not to, the they think the brand is great.
If you want to get a better idea, talk to someone who
Re:Samsung Samsung Samsung (Score:3, Insightful)
In general, I find that clean power is much more necessary than a preferred manufacturer. Dirty power from a cheap or overloaded
Re:Reliability (Score:2)
Re:Samsung Samsung Samsung (Score:2)
Re:Samsung Samsung Samsung (Score:2)
They are fast little drives and with the fluid bearings are quite a bit quieter than the drives they replaced.
storagereview; one of the few smart review sites (Score:5, Informative)
Re:storagereview; one of the few smart review site (Score:2)
Of course these review sites are often making a bunch of money off this stuff.
Sites like Rotten Tomatoes exist basically leeching off movie and music reviews you'd think someone would do this for computer hardware...
I don't think it's ethical and I think stuff is going to slip through the cracks if they move to such a model but it will go a long way towards demonstrating which Hardwa
I'm off Maxtor (Score:2)
Re:I'm off Maxtor (Score:2)
Always desktops, rarely laptops (Score:4, Interesting)
Enough with speed. More capacity and reliability. (Score:5, Insightful)
Capacity, yes. Increase that. Reliability, yes. Improve that. But hard drive speed is a grossly overrated and mostly unneeded attribute.
-S
Re:Enough with speed. More capacity and reliabilit (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Enough with speed. More capacity and reliabilit (Score:2)
Re:Enough with speed. More capacity and reliabilit (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's time for the Quantum Bigfoot drives to make a comeback. With today's technology, I'm sure we could easily have a 1TB drive with 5.25" platters. I'd buy one. I wouldn't really care about speed or latency issues, as I would certainly have a fast 3.5" drive to boot the OS off of.
Re:Enough with speed. More capacity and reliabilit (Score:2)
Absolutely!
I want one fast drive on my system, the one with the swap space, the OS and the apps installed. Then I need about 1TB of space which can be very slow by today's standards. I just want it to be very reliable an
Re:Enough with speed. More capacity and reliabilit (Score:2)
They only fail after a year if they are in a rather enclosed space, with no airflow. Get a case with accomodations for a 80/92/120mm fan in-front of the hard drive areas, and you'll have far fewer problems.
Additionally, you should spend a bit more and buy from Seagate. They are typically lower power than others, and they have 5-year warranties on everything, which bodes well for their reliability.
in september i built (Score:2)
which gives me a 465G volume at 112,844 KB/s, according to nero
i'm very happy, i edit hdv video... the raid0 volume serves as a "scratch pad" for saving video and for editting it: when you need the space
when done, the work gets saved to more reliable, slower media
it's really not that loud (in a thermaltake box with 7 fans, which is well built acoustically)
Is the comparison with NCQ fair or even useful? (Score:3, Informative)
NCQ allows the OS to know what has been committed to disk, which is very important from a reliability perspective. File systems do not function properly without this assurance, and can be seriously damaged on power failure.
To be fair, comparisons with NCQ should be made when write caching is turned off. Only in this case do you get the same level of reliability. Of course, ATA will be completely slaughtered, but it is a fair comparison. This abysmal performance led to the use of write caching; increasing performance at the expense of reliability. Now that it is possible to restore the reliability with NCQ, making a comparison without clarifying this point is not at all helpful.
The thing I would like to know is which disks actually implement NCQ properly, and which still lie to the system? Since drive manufacturers have been "cheating" for years on their IDE drives, has the situation truly been fixed? Spindle speed aside, it should now be possible to achieve the performance AND reliability that SCSI devices have offered for years. Unfortunately reviewers never seem to address this aspect.
Marketing gone crazy (Score:2)
Ooooooh, flurry
Collective Noun (Score:2)
New western digital Raptor - think not (Score:2)
Differences: RE (raid edition) & RE2 specialize in "limiting the drive's error recovery time", and are specialized for raid configurations and reliability. Raptor on the other hand is speciallized in latency and reliability.
And that's when I stopped reading (and clicking away the - cannot find add
Re:Hard Drive Breakthrough? (Score:2)
Re:Testbed (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, a lot of their forum regulars are fanatical Windows supporters, to the point of claiming "...in smp scaling windows is better than linux, and linux is better than freebsd. for vms windows is better than freebsd, and freebsd is better than linux." [storagereview.net], so I'd take what they say with a grain of salt.
I'm sorry? (Score:2)
lol what (Score:2)
Re:lol what (Score:2, Funny)
Re:lol what (Score:2)
Re:Testbed (Score:2, Insightful)
Because that's what most people use, maybe? Because that's what most benchmarking tools run on, maybe? If anything, I'd wonder why somebody would do benchmarks on something other than Windows.
Re:Testbed (Score:2)
But likely the results would be proportionately the same, even if the absolute performance is different.
Re:Testbed (Score:2)
I'd say so, yes.
Re:Testbed (Score:3, Funny)
That said, many Windows administrators are notoriously unstable due to the low barrier to entry. That's one of the main reasons I prefer Linux on my servers for most applications.
--S
Re:Testbed (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Deathstar - top performer, yeah right. (Score:2)
If that theory is not true, then I owe it to the IBM deskstar 80GBs and 60GBs. I have multiple of these drives and they have lasted years.
Re:Moving day at Maxtor. (Score:2)
Two now I need to figure out a way to move W2K from a 120 to a 200 without buying Ghost.
Not sure if it'll work, but if you format the target drive, and boot say, OS X 10.4, you should be able to
sudo ditto -rsrc
I think that'll work on NTFS with 10.4
Move your Windows to the new drive (Score:2)
Re:Move your Windows to the new SATA drive (Score:2)