Seagate 7200.9 160GB: The Highest Platter Density to Date!
by Purav Sanghani on January 31, 2006 10:29 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Real World Tests - Multitasking Performance
To provide a real world example of multitasking, we run Outlook and import 450MB of emails into an account. We then time how long it takes our benchmarking utility to zip a single 300MB file. To compare our results, we calculate the difference between the multitasked process and the single task file zip process.
Real World Tests - Application Load Times
In our Application Load Time tests, we measure the time that it takes for each application to startup. For example, our benchmarking tool begins the stopwatch as soon as PhotoShopCS.exe is run and stops after the application has finished loading all of the plug-ins and filters and shuts down. We take the average of 3 runs with system reboots and hard disk defragmentations before each test run.
The higher density platters of the 160GB unit prove to perform slightly faster when loading the Office 2003 application suite as well as the Photoshop CS imaging software. RAID-0 does not help here at all, but does very little to hurt.
Game Level Load Times
Our Game Level Loading Time tests include two of the latest games: Doom 3 and Half-Life 2. Because of their high resolution textures and the large levels, the loading time for the levels of each game are long enough to help show a difference between each drive.
We have also included an older strategy game, Command & Conquer: Generals, because of its longer level load times as well. Though the game is a couple of years old, it still proves to be a good measure of data loading performance.
To provide a real world example of multitasking, we run Outlook and import 450MB of emails into an account. We then time how long it takes our benchmarking utility to zip a single 300MB file. To compare our results, we calculate the difference between the multitasked process and the single task file zip process.
| Outlook + Zip a 300MB File Within Drive | ||||
| Multitasked | File Zip Only | % Difference | ||
| Seagate 7200.9 160GB | 78.624 | 65.715 | 19.6% | |
| Seagate 7200.9 160GB (2-Drive, RAID-0) | 68.546 | 58.693 | 16.8% | |
| Hitachi T7K250 160GB | 79.815 | 65.641 | 21.6% | |
| Samsung HD160JJ 160GB | 73.554 | 61.068 | 20.4% | |
| Western Digital WD1600JS 160GB | 74.371 | 61.182 | 21.6% | |
| Seagate 7200.9 500GB | 69.512 | 59.785 | 16.3% | |
Real World Tests - Application Load Times
In our Application Load Time tests, we measure the time that it takes for each application to startup. For example, our benchmarking tool begins the stopwatch as soon as PhotoShopCS.exe is run and stops after the application has finished loading all of the plug-ins and filters and shuts down. We take the average of 3 runs with system reboots and hard disk defragmentations before each test run.
| Application Load Times (average, seconds) | |||||
| PhotoShop CS | Word 2003 | Excel 2003 | Access 2003 | PowerPoint 2003 | |
| Seagate 7200.9 160GB | 7.454 | 1.109 | 1.125 | .968 | 1.109 |
| Seagate 7200.9 160GB (2-Drive, RAID-0) | 7.544 | 1.171 | 1.140 | 1.125 | 1.000 |
| Hitachi T7K250 160GB | 7.984 | 2.375 | 2.609 | 2.766 | 2.109 |
| Samsung HD160JJ 160GB | 8.601 | 2.554 | 2.887 | 3.115 | 2.245 |
| Western Digital WD1600JS 160GB | 8.938 | 2.469 | 2.562 | 2.484 | 2.438 |
| Seagate 7200.9 500GB | 8.024 | 1.687 | 1.718 | 1.640 | 1.593 |
The higher density platters of the 160GB unit prove to perform slightly faster when loading the Office 2003 application suite as well as the Photoshop CS imaging software. RAID-0 does not help here at all, but does very little to hurt.
Game Level Load Times
Our Game Level Loading Time tests include two of the latest games: Doom 3 and Half-Life 2. Because of their high resolution textures and the large levels, the loading time for the levels of each game are long enough to help show a difference between each drive.
We have also included an older strategy game, Command & Conquer: Generals, because of its longer level load times as well. Though the game is a couple of years old, it still proves to be a good measure of data loading performance.
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Orbs - Friday, January 27, 2006 - link
If you have a large, PATA backup drive, then the chance of failure issue really isn't that big a deal, especially with the longer warranties (Raptors are enterprise class products for WD, aren't they?).The interesting question to me is, does performance increase with 10,000 RPMs, SATA bandwidth AND increased platter density.
I believe the Raptors aren't 3.0 GB/s SATA but they still should have plenty of room to run, and if I remember correctly, the 150 GB Raptors gained their extra space by a higher density platter than the 74 GB version.
Now that's a setup that might be worth $600. It all depends if it lives up to the potential. AnandTech, let's get a SATA RAID-0 Shoot Out going!!
Orbs - Friday, January 27, 2006 - link
Oh, and in general, great articles lately :)DS Delaroca - Friday, January 27, 2006 - link
i think he means the new raptors WD1500ADFD 150GB on a raid setup.