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Data Storage Hardware Technology

Flurry of Hard Drive Reviews 184

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the truth-lies-and-magnetic-storage dept.
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.
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Flurry of Hard Drive Reviews More

Flurry of Hard Drive Reviews

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  • Bah (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 05, 2005 @07:37PM (#13959963)
    I want a solid state drive; sick of mechanical breakdowns and especially the noise.

    • Not quite there (Score:3, Informative)

      by fredistheking ( 464407 )
      Right now you can get 2GB flash chips. Put a few of these together and you have enough space for a decent install. The problem is that the performance is not quite there yet. You can expect raw read and right performance aroun 10MB/s on the fastest chips on the market. This is still alot less than the 50MB/s+ you find on desktop drives.

      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:Bah (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 )
      I want a solid state drive; sick of mechanical breakdowns and especially the noise.

      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

    • I want a solid state drive; sick of mechanical breakdowns

      You're sick of mechanical breakdowns, so you want to replace it with something far less reliable, that will frequently have non-mechanical breakdowns.

      and especially the noise.

      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

  • Seagate's "nearline" drive (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @07:42PM (#13959982)
    Storage manufacturers have tackled the issue by introducing a new class of device, the "nearline" drive that, when combined with the aforementioned online and offline segments, tiers today's enterprise storage into three distinct levels. By keeping highly-accessed, current information in the traditional domain of high-speed, swift-actuator drives and relegating less-used but still-accessed data to slower, less expensive devices, drive firms aspire to deliver solutions that balance the needs for performance with cost.

    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)

      by drsmithy ( 35869 ) <drsmithy&gmail,com> on Saturday November 05, 2005 @07:58PM (#13960042)
      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?

      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)

        by Alien Being ( 18488 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @08:26PM (#13960189)
        "RAID improves throughput, but not latency."

        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)

          by drsmithy ( 35869 ) <drsmithy&gmail,com> on Saturday November 05, 2005 @10:14PM (#13960560)
          Argh! This myth needs to end.

          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.

        • How does RAID improve the latency or throughput of a database server transaction log file which is being flushed to disk at the end of every transaction?
      • Well ok, RAID does not improve latency when you are reading that special random single byte and then send the drives to sleep again, but it does improve the latency required to fetch a big chunk of data of fixed size. You also would have the option to choose smaller drives with faster head positioning. Of course in the real world, better drive parameter often have to be purchased hand in hand with a bigger drive.

    • Re:Seagate's "nearline" drive (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Noose For A Neck ( 610324 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @07:58PM (#13960046)
      No.

      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.

      • RAID does not lower data access times.

        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

    • You have to understand what RAID meant when it was created.

      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

  • Performance vs Noise (Score:3, Informative)

    by Munta ( 925134 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @07:54PM (#13960025) Homepage
    While high performance drives may be important, I feel that many drive manufacturers are forgetting that noise is a big issue. When you have 3 PC plus running at home high performance drives will just add to already high number of decibels that we have to suffer. Keeping my hearing is probably more important to saving a few milliseconds for each drive seek.

    • Re:Performance vs Noise (Score:3, Informative)

      by CyricZ ( 887944 )
      Have you invested in a proper server closet? Indeed, many people build them in the basement of their home. You can use various dumb terminal systems to access your computers, even desktop ones. You get the benefits of a desktop under your desk, but without the noise and the increased room temperature.

      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.

      • many people in other parts of the world lack these "basements" you speak of. where can i buy one for myself??? /sarcasm

        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.
        • If you don't have a basement, build a server shelter in your garage. Perhaps even your attic, if the temperature remains low enough.

          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.

          • Obviously you dont own a 6U Alphaserver 2100 RM

            it weighs 54 kilos standard, the average wood DIY rack aint gonna cut it for this baby.

            • Re:Performance vs Noise (Score:3, Interesting)

              by CyricZ ( 887944 )
              I administered several of them at a previous job. They're not your typical desktop PC, but they're certainly not 1970s mainframes either.

              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
              • Im exceedinly cheep and far too proud of having obtained this large machine in the remote location i live. I want a little 8U Soundproofed glass rack for it ok... you caught me :P
              • I couldn't agree more. A well-designed shelf using 2x6s should support several TONS of weight per plank. Even standard shelving using much thinner wood and using glue (and maybe screws) instead of quarter inch bolts as fasteners will probably suffice for such a light load as yours.

                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
    • If that's one of your needs, Storagereview also measures the noise output of each drive in their reviews, along with heat output.

    • Size vs. Noise (Score:3, Informative)

      by fredistheking ( 464407 )
      The problem is that the density per disc is currently only about 125GB. So any drive over 125GB will have more than a single platter. The WD4000YR has 5 platters as do the Hitachi 400GB and 500GB. This extra mass is the problem which leads to higher temperatures, more noise and more power consumption.

      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
      • Seagate has 133GB platters that use perpendicular recording.
        • Oops, I definitely am getting some wires crossed.
          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.
    • Keeping my hearing is probably more important to saving a few milliseconds for each drive seek.

      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
  • ... that are as big as hard drives with spinning platters? And when will they be re-writable as many times as hard drives with spinning platters?

    I really REALLY want a dependable, long-lasting, fast and ample-capacity RAM drive. No more spinning platters please.

    • Then you'll have to start buying today's RAM drives. Remember, the companies need to get financing from somewhere. Sales is one such source of funds. The more you buy from them now, the more they can invest in coming up with the technology you want.

  • Noise? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @08:08PM (#13960090) Journal
    Most places like tomshardware and other benchmarking sites mention that hard drive speed is almost neglibable between teh high end and low end drivers for real desktop apps.

    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)

      by Lucractius ( 649116 )
      look at hiatchi laptop drives like the ones out of IBM (now lenovo *shudder*) laptops. You may find all those attirbutes you seek there.
    • I care about reliability (gone down hill since 2000)

      2000, eh? That's about the end of the dot-com boom. So it fits, I guess...

      Since the technology bubble burst, "there's been a scramble to move from the high-cost sites [North America/Western Europe -me] to the low-cost sites in China," said Flint Pulskamp, an analyst with the market research firm IDC. "In the late 1990s, Solectron used to make motherboards for Intel right here in Milpitas, in the heart of Silicon Valley. That's unthinkable now."

      -http://w [crmbuyer.com]

    • Sure, I buy apple computers.
    • Yes, quality died in the late 90's, but it's made a comeback in some places in the last few years. After cheaping out and shortening the lenght of their warrenties to the 1-2 year range of the low end competition, Seagate is back to 5 year warrenties. Several other manufacturers have also followed suite, raising quality and their warrenties.

  • Samsung Samsung Samsung (Score:5, Insightful)

    by slaker ( 53818 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @08:18PM (#13960154)
    SR makes a habit of forgetting about the other commodity drive manufacturer, Samsung. How much do they forget? Well, at one point at least, an Australian forum member (Tannin, if you know SR's forums) had to send them a drive to review because they couldn't or wouldn't make the effort to get one themselves. Also interesting is that Samsung has no relationship with SR as far as advertising.

    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.
    • What do you use your 12 TB of diskspace for? I assume it would be for personal use, considering it's in your apartment. Do you do audio and video editing?

      • It's actually about 8TB of real space, not counting spares and redundant drives.

        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
    • I've bought WDs almost exclusively for the last 3 years or so. No problems, with drive in all kinds of devices, including 4 of my computers.

      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.
      • In 2003 I RMA'd 14 WD drives, which is hilarious, 'cause I only actually owned nine WD drives.
        They're OK for you, great. Me? I like my data.
        • Ah, can never get enough of that. If a person disagrees with me, they're stupid. In this case apparently I like losing data.

          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.
    • I have an old Samsung 3.24Gb 5400rpm drive (model WU33205A) that i have in a carry case; i used it when i needed to move big files arround, now it stays put. That drive made *countless* trips all arround the city and took a lot of abuse - and there it is, still working. It just won't die on me.

      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)

      by King_TJ ( 85913 )
      Well, I'm somewhat inclined to agree with you. Though I never expected a lot from Samsung, my parents have one of their older IDE drives in their machine to this day that still performs just fine - at least 6 or 7 years now. Only problem now is, it just doesn't have enough capacity for modern OS's and software.

      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
      • Same here, except I switched back to Seagate about three years ago now. Couldn't have been happier. I think Seagate has really taken up the torch for reliability lately. They used to be bargain basement except for their SCSI lines, but nowadays I think they're the most solid drive you can get. I'm staying far away from Maxtor and WD, both of whom I've had recent and ongoing bad experiences with.
    • I think it is hard to track. For every given brand of product, it's easy to find someone that's had impeccable reliability, and it's also easy to find someone that's seen horrid reliability with the same product. I really can't say why. I would expect every product to fail eventually, and possibly for different reasons. It is possible that explains why different people get different results, is that their circumstances are somewhat different, be it temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, power, han
      • I think it is hard to track. For every given brand of product, it's easy to find someone that's had impeccable reliability, and it's also easy to find someone that's seen horrid reliability with the same product.
        I judge hard drive longevity by the warranty. At least you know it will last that long. 1 year does not speak well of a hard drive.
      • For every given brand of product, it's easy to find someone that's had impeccable reliability, and it's also easy to find someone that's seen horrid reliability with the same product. I really can't say why.

        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

    • Reliability reports on drives grouped by manufacturer cannot be trusted except when they're extreme low outliers (e.g. IBM's Deathstar). All major brands today are about equally reliable for practical purposes (except when you have severe heat dissipation issues maybe). In 8 years and no less than 15 different drives of 10 different models, I have not had a Maxtor drive die on me.

      In general, I find that clean power is much more necessary than a preferred manufacturer. Dirty power from a cheap or overloaded

  • storagereview; one of the few smart review sites (Score:5, Informative)

    by nostriluu ( 138310 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @08:26PM (#13960186) Homepage
    Slightly off topic, but Storage Review has always allowed the end user to compare any device to another by selection (eg 5400 rpm maxtor vs 10000 rpm WD) using discreet data fields (eg noise and heat). No other review site I know lets you do this, and its a very useful feature. Very often other review sites will scatter related devices across different non intersecting reviews, and I doubt they bother to break the data down to this level of detail.

    • Agreed... These things should all have been put into a database along with all the specs of the system used YEARS ago...

      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
  • Every Maxtor drive that I've bought in the last few years has died. Now buying Seagate due to their 5 year warrentee, raid 1ing them and will see what happens.

  • Always desktops, rarely laptops (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Proc6 ( 518858 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @09:07PM (#13960364)
    With over half the PC's sold being laptops and nearly all laptops' RAM and HD being just as user replace/upgradable as any desktop, reviewers should really give the laptop world some love.

  • Enough with speed. More capacity and reliability. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sdo1 ( 213835 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @09:08PM (#13960366) Journal
    I'm getting really tired of hyper-speed, super cheap drives that fail after a year. I've got 100's of gigs of media (ripped DVDs, ripped CDs, etc. etc.) that DO NOT need incredible latency or access speed numbers. Give me 5400 RPM drives (or slower!) that run cool and reliably! I'd imagine that most users are in the same boat. If you need a 200G drive, it's not because you need 200G for applications and games. It's because of media.

    Capacity, yes. Increase that. Reliability, yes. Improve that. But hard drive speed is a grossly overrated and mostly unneeded attribute.

    -S
    • I'm right there with you. I have a handful of 250GB drives and a couple of 400GB drives. I would pay *more* for my drives to be 5400...even that is overkill. I want them big, quiet, cool and reliable. Speed is simply a non-issue *for me*.

    • Re:Enough with speed. More capacity and reliabilit (Score:5, Interesting)

      by toddestan ( 632714 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @11:45PM (#13960920)
      I agree. I bought some Samsung 160GB 5400RPM drives back when they were being phased out. Cool, quiet, reliable - great drives.

      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.
      • 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.

        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

    • I'm getting really tired of hyper-speed, super cheap drives that fail after a year.

      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.

      I'd imagine that most users

  • a dual core box, with two of the 250G ata hitachis in raid0

    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)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 05, 2005 @11:02PM (#13960745)
    I see lots of benchmarking with and without NCQ enabled, and it appears that people are completely missing the point. If you have the option (and it works properly), you should never run a disk without NCQ! Benchmarking them together is a real disservice to all who don't understand the purpose of tagged command queueing.

    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.

  • Why would anyone want a fluffy hard drive??

    ...........What, why are you looking at me like that

    Ooooooh, flurry

  • Is 'flurry' the correct collective noun? Wouldn't a spindle or harddisk review be more apropriate?
  • Ok, so I started reading (well, I tried to between the various popup windows) and immediately found the one about a new Raptor drive. So I read into the article and it seems that they are talking about the RE2.

    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

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