Last
week, I was singing the praises of the new
IBM
Deskstar 120GXP.
Then I got an email from a loyal reader pointing
out that I had overlooked Western Digital's
newest 120GB 7200rpm ATA-100 Special Edition
drive, the Caviar
WD1200JB
(JB=Jumbo Buffer = 8MB). So here it is... fasten
your seat belts and extinguish all smoking
materials....
CONCLUSION
Holy
Moly! The Caviar
WD1200JB
smokes every hard drive I've tested to date
including the Cheetah Ultra160 15,000 rpm
drive.... especially in the write tests. (Notice
I've including the version of the Caviar with
the 2MB buffer. There is a definite advantage to
the 8MB buffer... at least on an ATA
interface.)
If
you want to see the results of TWO of them in a
striped RAID 0 array, check out my
"THREE
WAY RAID"
page (FireWire RAID, Ultra ATA hardware RAID,
Ultra ATA software RAID).
For
results on using a single WD1200JB
(and WD1200BB) in a FireWire case, check out
my
"FAST FIRE"
page.
(Note that the 8MB buffer has little advantage
in a FireWire case.)
RELATED
LINKS
Storage
Review posted their review
of the WD1200JB.
The
160GB
Maxtor D740X
is also tested by SR.
THE
IBM 120GXP and 333 HOUR PER MONTH DUTY
CYCLE
IBM
lists "333 hours per month" as one of the specs
on the IBM 120GXP drives. It implies that
you can't use the drive more than 11 hours per
day or it will go "kapoot." Well according to an
IBM spokesperson, that's not the
case:
"The
333 power-on hours (POH) defined in the
120GXP data sheet is not a new spec for our
GXP drives; it is consistent with what we've
held our desktop drives to in previous
generation drives. The 333 power-on spec is
not an indication of a maximum number of
power-on hours or limitation of the Deskstar
120GXP.
Our
specifications indicate that the 333 power-on
hours per month represent typical desktop PC
usage. This assumes an 11-hour day based on a
30 day month. Users can and have successfully
run the drive more than 11 hours a day and
333 hours per month; the drives have been
used successfully in 24x7
environments.
IBM
stands by the 3-year warranty for the 120GXP.
Power-on hours will not be a determining
factor in negating the warranty."
BOTTOM
LINE: Use the heck out of your 120gxp. If it
goes kapoot, IBM will replace it no matter how
many hours a day or month you use it. I've got
four of them. My favorite feature: they are
faster
than the legendary WD1200JB drives when used in
a striped
RAID.
And, according to one reader, drop less frames
than the WD1200JB when used for digital video
production.
WHERE
TO BUY
2/23/02
-- I found the best price on the Western
Digital WD1200JB 120GB 8MB buffer and the IBM
120GXP 120GB. Get them for $256 each at
Trans
International.
Click the drop down "lowest Deals" menu on
this
page.
2/24/02
-- FLASH: NewEgg.com
now has the WD1200JB 120GB "Special Edition" 8MB
buffer for $234 (search on
"WD1200JB").
Another
good source for bare drives is Other
World Computing.
They also carry the Sonnet Tempo ATA-100 PCI
card.
See
the STORAGE
section of my HOT
DEALS
page for more good sources of the products
tested on this page.
TEST
NOTES
The
test "mule" was an Apple
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).
ATA-100
PCI CONTROLLER:
Sonnet
Technology Tempo
ATA-100
PCI card
TEST
ATA-100 DRIVES (all 7200rpm):
TEST
METHODOLOGY:
I've grown increasingly fond of a benchmark
utility called QuickBench. For one thing, it's
the only benchmark that uses a block size larger
than the 8MB buffer of the WD1200JB, so the
effects of caching is all but eliminated. Their
10MB block transfer measures the drive's
sustained transfer rate, as well as the driver's
efficiency at handling large transfers. This is
useful information for anyone doing video or
audio capture and/or playback.
Their
small random reads and writes factor in seek
time, but factor out caching and overall
throughput. For most users, this is the
performance that counts on a day to day
basis.
Then
there's my old favorite: DUPLICATE a large
document. It forces a drive to read and write to
itself at the same time. Drives are getting so
fast these days that I had to come up with a
bigger file. So starting with this page, I'm
going to start using a 457MB document... you
know... the pak0.pak3 file that you need to run
Quake3. That's almost a half of a gig. That will
keep the drive busy a for at least a few
seconds.
WHERE TO ORDER YOUR APPLE PRODUCTS
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© 1995-2007 Rob Art Morgan
"BARE facts on Macintosh speed FEATS"
Email
, the webmaster
