Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000: Two Terabyte RAID Redux
by Gary Key on April 23, 2007 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Final Thoughts
Equipped with a new test bed that should remove the vast majority of CPU and GPU bound situations we noticed further improvements in our quasi-synthetic PCMark05 tests. We measured an improvement of 43% in the final PCMark05 score with RAID 0 compared to a 25% improvement in our previous test bed. While we expected the File Write and Anti-Virus tests to improve significantly, we were slightly surprised with the General Usage scores that were up to 28% better. However, the Application loading score was still in the 5% range with the Raptors but the Hitachi 7K1000 showed almost zero differences. The most surprising result was the fact that the Deskstar 7K1000 scored 3%~5% better than the Raptors on the Intel platform.
In our last article the only meaningful application performance improvement with RAID 0 came in the Nero Recode tests where the improved write performance reduced our encoding process by about 5%. Now that we have basically removed the CPU from being a factor in these tests, we see a 30% difference with RAID 0 during encoding, a 21% difference in file extraction, and a 45% difference when doing file copy or move operations on the RAID volume.
All of those results sound very impressive but in the balance of our application and game tests we only noticed a 2%~3% performance difference between RAID 0 and single drive configurations. Unless you extract files, copy or move them on the same drive, and encode all day long then the benefits of RAID 0 on the typical consumer desktop is not worth the price of admission. What is the price? In this case, $399 for a second 7K1000, a halving of the mean time between failure rates on each drive, a data backup nightmare, and increases in noise, thermals, and power consumption.
We really wanted to provide additional benchmarks for this article as we had developed and tested benchmarks for Photoshop CS3, AutoCAD 2008, Oblivion, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and multi-tasking scenarios with BiTorrent clients but there was an issue during testing. We had a Western Digital WD1500 meet its maker during testing. The drive literally smoked its platters. Of course we lost the entire test image and a significant amount of test time. However, those are the perils of pushing hardware on a continuous basis. The fact that it happened during RAID 0 testing made it difficult to accept but it just as easily could have happened in single drive testing resulting in the same loss of data. A data loss that would not have occurred if we had been using RAID 1, 5, or 10.
RAID 0 can provide some impressive performance results in synthetic benchmarks and certain applications that are write speed starved as we have shown. In fact, with the new test bed the test results where RAID 0 shines are even more impressive now. However, we still do not think RAID 0 is worth the trouble or cost for the average desktop user or gamer, especially with the software RAID capabilities included on most motherboards. If you must run RAID on the desktop, then we highly recommend the use of RAID 1, 5, or 10 (0+1) in order to protect your data and probably a hardware controller if you can afford one. We are going to delve into the world of RAID in the coming weeks with additional tests, system configurations, and hardware controllers. At this time we still do not recommend RAID 0 for most desktop users due to the lack of widespread performance improvements and potential data integrity concerns with it.
Equipped with a new test bed that should remove the vast majority of CPU and GPU bound situations we noticed further improvements in our quasi-synthetic PCMark05 tests. We measured an improvement of 43% in the final PCMark05 score with RAID 0 compared to a 25% improvement in our previous test bed. While we expected the File Write and Anti-Virus tests to improve significantly, we were slightly surprised with the General Usage scores that were up to 28% better. However, the Application loading score was still in the 5% range with the Raptors but the Hitachi 7K1000 showed almost zero differences. The most surprising result was the fact that the Deskstar 7K1000 scored 3%~5% better than the Raptors on the Intel platform.
In our last article the only meaningful application performance improvement with RAID 0 came in the Nero Recode tests where the improved write performance reduced our encoding process by about 5%. Now that we have basically removed the CPU from being a factor in these tests, we see a 30% difference with RAID 0 during encoding, a 21% difference in file extraction, and a 45% difference when doing file copy or move operations on the RAID volume.
All of those results sound very impressive but in the balance of our application and game tests we only noticed a 2%~3% performance difference between RAID 0 and single drive configurations. Unless you extract files, copy or move them on the same drive, and encode all day long then the benefits of RAID 0 on the typical consumer desktop is not worth the price of admission. What is the price? In this case, $399 for a second 7K1000, a halving of the mean time between failure rates on each drive, a data backup nightmare, and increases in noise, thermals, and power consumption.
We really wanted to provide additional benchmarks for this article as we had developed and tested benchmarks for Photoshop CS3, AutoCAD 2008, Oblivion, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and multi-tasking scenarios with BiTorrent clients but there was an issue during testing. We had a Western Digital WD1500 meet its maker during testing. The drive literally smoked its platters. Of course we lost the entire test image and a significant amount of test time. However, those are the perils of pushing hardware on a continuous basis. The fact that it happened during RAID 0 testing made it difficult to accept but it just as easily could have happened in single drive testing resulting in the same loss of data. A data loss that would not have occurred if we had been using RAID 1, 5, or 10.
RAID 0 can provide some impressive performance results in synthetic benchmarks and certain applications that are write speed starved as we have shown. In fact, with the new test bed the test results where RAID 0 shines are even more impressive now. However, we still do not think RAID 0 is worth the trouble or cost for the average desktop user or gamer, especially with the software RAID capabilities included on most motherboards. If you must run RAID on the desktop, then we highly recommend the use of RAID 1, 5, or 10 (0+1) in order to protect your data and probably a hardware controller if you can afford one. We are going to delve into the world of RAID in the coming weeks with additional tests, system configurations, and hardware controllers. At this time we still do not recommend RAID 0 for most desktop users due to the lack of widespread performance improvements and potential data integrity concerns with it.
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sprockkets - Monday, April 23, 2007 - link
Pic wanted of smoked drive.lplatypus - Monday, April 23, 2007 - link
RAID-0 is not a general solution to improve disk performance. It solves a specific problem: it increases sequential disk bandwidth. If you're not doing sequential disk accesses, then don't expect RAID-0 to help.Of course if your application is doing random disk accesses unnecessarily, then that's a programming problem. But often an application really does need to do random disk accesses.
Advanced filesystems attempt to make common file access patterns translate into sequential disk accesses, so poor RAID-0 performance might be a symptom of a poor filesystem design in your OS. Yet there is a limit to how much the filesystem can produce sequential disk accesses.
yyrkoon - Monday, April 23, 2007 - link
GPU limited HDDs eh ? Come on guys, this statement is starting to sound as though you think using RAID0 in a gaming system is going to increase FPS or something . . . which, we all know is wrong(or should know).
Gee, a Raptor smoking its platters, this aught to quiet those people who think the Raptors are impervious to melt downs. Seriously though, how much was this HDD used ? How old was it ? Personally, I think the answers to both the two questions above, would be worth well more than about 20 AT articles . . . and I must say I rather enjoy reading the articles.
Looking forward to you adding Seagates fastest of their SATA line, and would like to know if you have plans, or would consider testing the NL35 line as well. From what little I have read, the NL35 line are supposed to be geared towards Video, so I would assume the sustained throughput would be higher, but thats why the request for a test of these drives.
nullpointerus - Monday, April 23, 2007 - link
As the article itself says, they did so to answer readers' (IMO ridiculous) objections to the previous RAID article. So you should poke fun at the gamer RAID crowd instead.
yyrkoon - Tuesday, April 24, 2007 - link
That was not my point, I am fairly confident that AT staff doesnt believe this, but it only leads to confusion, for the less tech savvy. I can hear it all over the wanna be 'geek' 'channels' already . . . 'OMG RAID0 increases FPS in <insert first person title name here>, becasue AT said so . . .'. Even though we all know, this is not what was said.SilthDraeth - Monday, April 23, 2007 - link
hopefully our second round of results will answer more questions than it raises answers.johnsonx - Tuesday, April 24, 2007 - link
The last word in that sentence just needs to go away. Then it makes perfect sense: "... answer more questions than it raises."
joex444 - Monday, April 23, 2007 - link
I don't find it confusing, but then again I passed grade 4.vailr - Monday, April 23, 2007 - link
Could you comment on AHCI mode? Comparing enabled in bios vs. disabled?The AHCI "hot swap" feature, for example. Seems to work fine when connected to a SATA JMicron controller, yet DO NOT when connected to an Intel port. On the Gigabyte DS3 board, for one example.
Also: there are newer Intel Inf and Matrix drivers.
Used for this report:
System Platform Drivers:
Intel 8.1.1.1010
Intel Matrix RAID 6.2.1.1002
vs.
Intel Inf Driver Version 8.4.0.1010 Beta
http://www.station-drivers.com/page/intel%20chipse...">http://www.station-drivers.com/page/intel%20chipse...
Matrix Storage Manager drivers version 7.0.0.1020 WHQL
http://www.station-drivers.com/page/intel%20raid.h...">http://www.station-drivers.com/page/intel%20raid.h...
DigitalFreak - Monday, April 23, 2007 - link
AT yet again proves the RAID-0 freak'tards wrong.