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Originally
posted March 2nd, 2002
by rob
ART morgan,
Mad Mac Scientist
Okay.
The Western Digital Caviar
WD1200JB
(as in "Jumbo Buffer") was the winner in the
single
drive tests.
But the IBM 120GXP
came in second. So what if I put a pair of each in
a Hardware Striped Array (RAID 0)? Which of the two
brands of drives makes the best setup when using an
Acard 6880M HW ATA-133 card?
(I
already had a pair of WD1200JB's but thanks to
Other
World Computing,
I now have a pair of IBM 120gxp's.)
WHAT
DOES IT ALL MEAN?
It
means that if you want the fastest Ultra ATA
Hardware RAID setup, the IBM 120GXP's are the way
to go.
The
8MB buffer in the WD1200JB (16MB total with dual
drive striped array), didn't help it in this test
as much as I expected.
If
you are considering FireWire
RAID,
my tests
shows it to be only half as fast as Ultra ATA HW
RAID.
ONLY
333 HOURS PER MONTH?
Have you seen the "333 hours per month"
spec 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. As you can see above, 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.
NOTE
ON DEEP SLEEP
I
installed the latest firmware/driver update 1.2 for
the Acard 6880M HW RAID card but the QuickSilver
Dual G4/800 still does NOT go into Deep Sleep under
OS X. It will under OS 9. You can be sure I'll be
bugging Acard about it.
RELATED
SPEED LINKS
MacWorld
compares four different Hardware ATA-133 RAID
cards. (Pssst. They are all made by Acard but have
different prices, warranty and support.) They rated
SIIG the best with 5 year warranty and lowest
price. I've seen them as low as $132.
Bare
Feats has a report
on the fastest Ultra ATA
drives
including the WD1200JB and IBM 120GXP.
Bare
Feats did an experiment that identified
how
much speed you lose as the drive fills
up.
Storage
Review
has a recent test
of the WD1200JB.
Read
Bare Feats' report
FireWire RAID
versus SW & HW ATA RAID on the Mac.
TEST
HARDWARE
The
test "mule" was the Apple
Power Mac G4/800MP.
The
Hardware RAID PCI controller card used was The
Acard AEC-6880M
True Hardware RAID Ultra
ATA-133.
The
hard drives used included:
Two Western Digital Caviar
WD1200JB
(120GB, 7200rpm, 8MB buffer)
Two IBM 120GXP (120GB, 7200rpm, 2MB buffer) --
courtesy of Other
World Computing
TEST
SOFTWARE & PROCEDURES
QuickBench, a handy benchmarking tool from
Intech
(the creators of HD Speed Tools), was used to
measured sustained WRITE speed using 10MB blocks.
This is useful for those of you choosing a drive
for Video or Audio capture.
For
the real world test, I used the pak0.pak3 file from
Quake
3
which is 457MB in size. By duplicating this file on
a drive, it forces it to read and write to itself
simultaneously. It's also big enough that it should
defeat the advantage of any large drive buffer. I
calculate the megabytes/second transfer speed by
the formula SIZE * 2 / TIME.
WHERE
TO BUY
Other
World Computing
has all three sizes of IBM 120GXP's in stock. They
charge a little more than the cut rate PC sites but
I encourage you to support this Mac vendor as best
you can.
Another
Mac vendor to support is Trans
International.
If
you are shopping bottom dollar, I have to admit
that GoogleGear.com
and
NewEgg.com
usually have the lowest price on bare drives. Just
search on "120gxp" or "WD1200JB."
The
Acard AEC-6880M
True Hardware RAID Ultra
ATA-133
card is available from Other
World Computing.
Sonnet Technology is selling it under their label
as the Tempo
RAID133.
An alert reader found the same card with the SIIG
label on TheNerds.Net
for $132.
(Search on the catalog number: 989889) Same card
and uses same firmware.
See
the STORAGE
section of my HOT
DEALS
page for more good sources of the products tested
on this page.
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