NOTE: THE CHARTS ABOVE
DISPLAY MB/SEC SO
LONGER
IS BETTER. THIS LAST CHART BELOW DISPLAYS TOTAL
TIME SO
SHORTER
IS BETTER.
PERFORMANCE
ANALYSIS
The Barracuda
ATA IV scored highest in 6 out of 8 tests. The
Maxtor D740X comes in a close second by scoring
equal or better than the Barracuda in 4 out of 7
tests.
The IBM 60gxp,
the previous speed champ, came in second in 4
out of 7 tests. The Western Digital WD800BB that
ships with the G4/800MP last or next to the last
in all but two tests. It seems to be the best
scratch drive for Photoshop.
I've always
been partial to Seagate drives. For me, they
have been reliable and quiet and fast. The new
Barracuda ATA IV drive is no exception. It
registered the fastest sustained read/write
speed of any EIDE/ATA drive tested to date. It
tied with the sustained speed of a Seagate
Cheetah Ultra160 15,000 rpm drive, considered
the epitome of drive speed. So it is the new
Ultra ATA champ.
CAUTION:
When I hooked up these drives to the same
FireWire enclosure, I got a whole different
ranking in speed. The IBM 60gxp was the
standout. The Barracuda IV 4 was shockingly slow
until I formatted it using FWB's HDToolkit and
used their FW enabler. Then it was right in the
middle of the Pack. Don't expect any of these
drives to go faster in a FireWire case than on
an Ultra ATA controller. The 50MB/sec
theoretical speed of FireWire is just that:
theoretical. You know, just as the theoretical
speed of ATA/100 is 100MB/sec?
WHAT ABOUT
OS X?
Some strange
differences showed up when the tests were
repeated under OS X. All the drives took longer
to duplicate the one big file and play back the
movie but took much less time to duplicate the
folder with many small documents and much less
time to run the Photoshop test. The graph below
shows the most dramatic difference of the same
drive setup under OS X versus OS 9:
HOW NOISY
ARE THE DRIVES?
The Seagate
ATA IV was the quietest. It was the only drive
that could not be heard above the noise of the
G4 Tower's fans, even when running the noisy
random test. The Maxtor D740X. It could barely
be heard in the random test. (Both the Seagate
and Maxtor have Fluid Dynamic Bearings.) If I
had a Power Cube G4 or iMac DV and wanted to
upgrade the hard drive with a very quiet one,
the Barracuda would be my choice.
WHAT ABOUT
RELIABILITY?
I have no
scientific evidence of how reliable these drives
are. I've learned from painful experience that
the only sure thing is death and taxes. So I
always buy two of any drive and use the second
one as either a mirror or a quick and dirty
backup target. There's no drive so good that it
will eliminate the need for frequent backup. If
you can't afford two 80GB drives, get two 40GB
and hedge your bets that way. Or burn a lot of
CD's.
LINKS TO OTHER
REVIEWS
StorageReview.com
has tested the Maxtor D740X and compared it to
the IBM 60gxp, Barracuda ATA IV, and a Western
Digital WD1000BB. In their tests (conducted on a
Windows sytem) showed the WD1000BB to be the
fastest drive in low level testing and the IBM
60gxp to be fastest in high level testing. The
Barracuda came in second and the Maxtor in third
for most tests. They also ranked the Barracuda
as quietest.
IN MY NEXT
REPORT....
Will these
drives go faster when hooked up to an ATA/100 or
ATA/133 controller? And how fast will two of
them go in a striped array (RAID 0) using
SoftRAID on an ATA/100 controller card or using
a true hardware RAID ATA/133 controller card?
And what about the new RAID function in OS X?
STAY TUNED!
WHERE TO
BUY
NewEgg.com
(last time I checked) had all these drives in
stock except the Maxtor D740X (model #6L080L4).
No company on the net seems to have that drive
just yet. Don't confuse it with the model
#6L080J4 which does NOT have fluid dynamic
bearing motors.
The reason I
mention NewEgg.com
is because during the last year, they have had
the lowest prices on all models of drives.
That's where I buy all my personal
drives.
If you already have two drives and want to add a third one, you might consider an ATA/100 PCI controller card such as the Sonnet Tech ATA/100 or Acard Hardware RAID ATA/100.
TEST
NOTES
The test
"mule" was an Apple
Power Mac G4/800MP with disk cache set to 512K
(to diminish effect of system caching),
AppleTalk OFF, Virtual Memory OFF, and
Extensions set to minimal (BASE).
TESTS
DRIVES:
Seagate
Barracuda ATA
IV
(ST380021A) 80GB 7200rpm ATA/100
Maxtor
DiamondMax Plus
D740X
(6L080L4) 80GB 7200rpm ATA/100/133
(note model number ending in "L4" has fluid
dynamic bearing motors)
IBM
Deskstar 60gxp
60GB 7200rpm ATA/100
Western
Digital Caviar
WD800BB
80GB 7200rpm ATA/100
The
Seagate
Cheetah X15
36LP
(ST318452LW) 18GB 15,000RPM Ultra160 SCSI drive
connected to an Adaptec 39160 PCI controller
card was included for comparison purposes for
those wondering how these newest Ultra ATA
drives compare to the fastest Ultra SCSI drive.
By the way, this Ultra SCSI drive costs twice as
much and has 1/3 the capacity of the Ultra ATA
drives tested!
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© 1995-2007 Rob Art Morgan
"BARE facts on Macintosh speed FEATS"
Email
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