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the "fastest" HDD is slow

post #1 of 28
12/19/09 at 11:24pm
Thread Starter 
I am building a new HTPC and everything is fast except HDD. I got WD Velociraptor 300G and even the burst rate tops at 128MB/s or at 1Gb/s.
MoBo is Asus P7P55D-E Deluxe rated at 3Gb/s or 6Gb/s for solid state storage.
Memory is 6GB Kingston (KHX2000C8D3T1K3/6GX 6GB 2000MHz DDR3)
cpu is quad Core i5
video is geoforce GTS 250 with 512 MB memory
windows 64 bit

windows 7 ranks my HDD at 5.9 on 7.9 max scale. all else is above 7.

Is my hdd performance good or how can I make it better? will raid 0 by adding another expensive Velociraptor 300G improve the speed?
LL
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post #2 of 28
12/20/09 at 12:33am
Thread Starter 
I forgot to mention that a review of wd velociraptor 300 shows 250MB/s burst rate? How can I get that speed. I downloaded latest chipset drivers. Maybe update windows 7?
Please advise. tnx
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post #3 of 28
12/20/09 at 7:17am
You may be confusing the max transfer rate you can get to or from the cache memory on the drive iteslf on single buffer transfers with the actual physical tranfer rate of data to/from the physical drive to it's cache memroy.
Some user's have found RAID 0 to be slower since the 2 data buffers involved have to be synched together and if the data involved is in the cache of the HDDs then the synce operation can take longer then a single buffer read.
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post #4 of 28
12/20/09 at 7:39am
i'm pretty sure you need an ssd to score above 5.9 in windows 7
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post #5 of 28
12/20/09 at 8:01am
yep, 5.9 is the limit for mechanical drives.
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post #6 of 28
12/20/09 at 8:04am
Quote:
Originally Posted by almostinsane View Post

yep, 5.9 is the limit for mechanical drives.

Even with RAID-0?
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post #7 of 28
12/20/09 at 8:41am
My WD Velociraptor 300G scores 5.9 too. Same as the 7200 RPM Drives I have in a different box. Next time I'll get a SDD, when the price drops.

Mike
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post #8 of 28
12/20/09 at 9:02am
Not to disappoint you but I have a "very fast" SSD and while it WAS fast it is not fast anymore. There are some huge hurdles to be fixed before SSD performance is consistent. I have one of the OCZ vertex 120gb drives. The performace degrades rather quickly. They do have a "fix" but its rather complicated and even the fix will never get perfect performance out of the drive. I really almost feel cheated for how much I paid for the drive. Had I known there was such degradation I would never have wasted the money. My last setup was 36gb x 2 WD raptors in raid 0 and I would say the performance was similar. When I first got the SSD it was blazing fast. Now its terrible. My current ranking is 5.9 if that says anything and I spent over $400 on this drive! I just checked my server computer where I put my old raid setup and that is at 5.9 as well. I do not have the OCZ fix implemented but that shows you how badly these drives degrade. And not every SSD manufacturer even has a fix so you would probably be screwed unless more come up with something to fix the degradation.

SSDs are great when you first get them and for benchmarks hard to beat but once you use them every day they basically suck and for $400 I could have kept my old setup and spent the money elsewhere.
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post #9 of 28
12/20/09 at 9:14am
Quote:
Originally Posted by ogormask View Post

Not to disappoint you but I have a "very fast" SSD and while it WAS fast it is not fast anymore. There are some huge hurdles to be fixed before SSD performance is consistent. I have one of the OCZ vertex 120gb drives. The performace degrades rather quickly. They do have a "fix" but its rather complicated and even the fix will never get perfect performance out of the drive. I really almost feel cheated for how much I paid for the drive. Had I known there was such degradation I would never have wasted the money. My last setup was 36gb x 2 WD raptors in raid 0 and I would say the performance was similar. When I first got the SSD it was blazing fast. Now its terrible. My current ranking is 5.9 if that says anything and I spent over $400 on this drive! I just checked my server computer where I put my old raid setup and that is at 5.9 as well. I do not have the OCZ fix implemented but that shows you how badly these drives degrade. And not every SSD manufacturer even has a fix so you would probably be screwed unless more come up with something to fix the degradation.

SSDs are great when you first get them and for benchmarks hard to beat but once you use them every day they basically suck and for $400 I could have kept my old setup and spent the money elsewhere.


That's good info...I used some early SSD's in an industrial application and they were really bad. They were un-reliable and slow. After a few months of usage the drive would get corrupt require reloading the OS, eventually replaced them with mechanical drives and haven't had a problem since. Many people have claimed the problems have been solves, it sounds like that may not be the case. Think I will hold off for a while.


Thanks!
Mike
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post #10 of 28
12/20/09 at 9:32am
I did some benchmarks for you so you can see what they look like. I have 3 different setups that would probably be a nice comparison. I defrag constantly so the drives are in tip top condition (except the SSD because you cant defrag one or shouldnt)

2 x WD Raptor 36gb Raid 0 (my server c

HD Tune: Intel Raid 0 Volume Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 5.9 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 124.4 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 94.9 MB/sec
Access Time : 8.8 ms
Burst Rate : 100.8 MB/sec
CPU Usage : -1.0%

My servers Areca 1261ml controller with 11 Seagate 1.5tb 7200.11 drives and 2 WD 1.5tb Green drives:

HD Tune: Areca ARC-1261-VOL#00 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 17.8 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 620.4 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 302.6 MB/sec
Access Time : 13.3 ms
Burst Rate : 584.0 MB/sec
CPU Usage : -1.0%

And finally the OCZ 120gb Vertex:

HD Tune: OCZ-VERTEX v1.10 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 35.2 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 173.3 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 140.7 MB/sec
Access Time : 0.1 ms
Burst Rate : 170.4 MB/sec
CPU Usage : -1.0%

The vertex is the 2nd fastest but is it worth $400 for that extra speed?
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post #11 of 28
12/20/09 at 9:55am
Quote:
Originally Posted by ogormask View Post

with 11 Seagate 1.5tb 7200.11 drives




ouch! I hope you have a good backup strategy
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post #12 of 28
12/20/09 at 10:19am
2.2TB free of 15TB

That is my backup strategy. Its a raid 6 with a battery backup unit as well as a UPS. I looked at every storage solution available and this is the only feasible/practical/reliable option. I was backing everything onto physical disk and when I built this array and tried to restore my backups alot of the disks didnt work. I would say 70% were ok after being stored a few years. That leads me to believe physical storage is no solution either. There are no other solutions that would work that are as reliable as this. And I dont know if you were hinting at the seagates because of the firmware fiasco but those use a much newer firmware and are perfectly safe. While they are not enterprise drives they cost 40% as much and if they break I can replace them and still save money.

*edit*

But yes I would cry if I lost my data. I seriously would probably go into a deep depression. A lot of it is probably irreplacable.
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post #13 of 28
12/20/09 at 12:25pm
Well I just spent like 3-4 hours just today to finally update the firmware on that SSD which adds trim support. Then you need to run iometer as they suggest in this thread here. http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...ad.php?t=63895

I think I did everything correctly.

The results:

HD Tune: OCZ-VERTEX Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 94.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 202.2 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 153.8 MB/sec
Access Time : 0.1 ms
Burst Rate : 174.4 MB/sec
CPU Usage : -1.0%
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post #14 of 28
12/20/09 at 6:12pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ogormask View Post

Well I just spent like 3-4 hours just today to finally update the firmware on that SSD which adds trim support. Then you need to run iometer as they suggest in this thread here. http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...ad.php?t=63895

I think I did everything correctly.

The results:

HD Tune: OCZ-VERTEX Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 94.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 202.2 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 153.8 MB/sec
Access Time : 0.1 ms
Burst Rate : 174.4 MB/sec
CPU Usage : -1.0%

I take it you're running Windows 7 and verified TRIM is enabled.
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post #15 of 28
12/20/09 at 6:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ogormask View Post

Not to disappoint you but I have a "very fast" SSD and while it WAS fast it is not fast anymore. There are some huge hurdles to be fixed before SSD performance is consistent. I have one of the OCZ vertex 120gb drives. The performace degrades rather quickly. They do have a "fix" but its rather complicated and even the fix will never get perfect performance out of the drive. I really almost feel cheated for how much I paid for the drive. Had I known there was such degradation I would never have wasted the money. My last setup was 36gb x 2 WD raptors in raid 0 and I would say the performance was similar. When I first got the SSD it was blazing fast. Now its terrible. My current ranking is 5.9 if that says anything and I spent over $400 on this drive! I just checked my server computer where I put my old raid setup and that is at 5.9 as well. I do not have the OCZ fix implemented but that shows you how badly these drives degrade. And not every SSD manufacturer even has a fix so you would probably be screwed unless more come up with something to fix the degradation.

SSDs are great when you first get them and for benchmarks hard to beat but once you use them every day they basically suck and for $400 I could have kept my old setup and spent the money elsewhere.


I think this might be a good read for you:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3667
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post #16 of 28
12/20/09 at 10:24pm
Thread Starter 
Thank you all for sharing your resultes. I feel lot better now because I was expecting higher numbers because of 10,000 rpm's ads promissing 35% faster speeds. Look at the picture of Seagate's new 6Gb/s 2TB Barracuda XT hard drive speed test beutifull picture. I belive it when I see my numbers double in HD tune next year.
My mobo supports 6Gb/s and also there are control cards for it. I have not seen test numbers yet for this drive.
I guess storage technology be it mechanical or ss will grow only incrementally.
We can allways get faster rates by ''short stroking'' our drives by formating it to use only outer half of the disk. Anyone tried it here? how many % gain?
LL
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post #17 of 28
12/21/09 at 8:09am
DRA I dont think you are going to get much out of the short stroke. I would check out http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/index.php for advice. I know that forum is probably the best for extreme computers. You will probably get a slight increase but I honestly dont think its going to be much.

stranger I have read that article and was waiting for trim support for a long time. Its just that updating the firmware is actually a rather complicated task which after 3-4 attempts I finally apparently succeeded. The OCZ vertex does have the indilinx controller but it took a long time for the latest firmware to finally arrive. I guess it was improved over how it was performing but it still doesnt feel like how it was when it was newly installed.

Phreaknes Yes. I couldnt run the verify command but it does seem to be working.
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post #18 of 28
12/21/09 at 8:14am
Quote:
Originally Posted by DrA View Post

Thank you all for sharing your resultes. I feel lot better now because I was expecting higher numbers because of 10,000 rpm's ads promissing 35% faster speeds.

The increased speed from a 10k drive isn't in the form of sequential transfer rate, it's in the form of reduced latency. That means small "random" read/write operations can be completed much faster. These are the type of operations that make up most of the typical disc activity for day-to-day operating system and application disk usage. Read a config file, load a small gui image, etc.

Quote:


Look at the picture of Seagate's new 6Gb/s 2TB Barracuda XT hard drive speed test beutifull picture. I belive it when I see my numbers double in HD tune next year.

It's not that fast really, it's actually a bit slower than WD's 2TB, 7200rpm offering.

My mobo supports 6Gb/s and also there are control cards for it. I have not seen test numbers yet for this drive.[/quote]

6Gb/s doesn't get you anything because no drives are even close to utilizing it. Drives are only just getting close to SATA 1's 1.5Gb/s

Quote:


I guess storage technology be it mechanical or ss will grow only incrementally.
We can allways get faster rates by ''short stroking'' our drives by formating it to use only outer half of the disk. Anyone tried it here? how many % gain?

If you need speed, mechanical drives are no match for good SSDs. Good SSDs can best 200MB/sec sequential, but utterly slaughter mechanical drives in random access (by a factor of 30 at least IIRC).
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post #19 of 28
12/21/09 at 9:48am
Quote:
Originally Posted by stanger89 View Post

The increased speed from a 10k drive isn't in the form of sequential transfer rate, it's in the form of reduced latency. That means small "random" read/write operations can be completed much faster. These are the type of operations that make up most of the typical disc activity for day-to-day operating system and application disk usage. Read a config file, load a small gui image, etc.

To expand on this, you can find that high capacity 1TB + drives at 5400 or 7200 could have the same read/write performance as a 10k Raptor or even better, because the data clusters on the platters are more condensed. As Stanger said, the raptor's are about reduced latency, which means more to a OS drive than sustained read/write of files.
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post #20 of 28
12/21/09 at 7:00pm
Thread Starter 
I put my 3 YEAR old WD EIDE WD3200JB Caviar and I am getting half the numbers.
Now I have my Windows 7 on VelociRaptor. What can I use Caviar for?
LL
LL
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post #21 of 28
12/21/09 at 7:04pm
Porn storage?
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post #22 of 28
12/21/09 at 7:09pm
Thread Starter 
it will open be slow lol
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post #23 of 28
12/21/09 at 7:29pm
Thread Starter 
error scan so far shows 1 damaged 122MB block. Belongs to garbage?
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post #24 of 28
12/22/09 at 2:01pm
I would run chkdsk and try to fix the errors before you call it garbage. It may be but not for sure.
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post #25 of 28
12/22/09 at 2:08pm
ogor,

thanks for posting your results with ssds. from your tests, it looks like your ssd's performance did increase a little after the firmware update, but do you have any idea how fast the ssd was when it was new?

thanks again for your insight.
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post #26 of 28
12/22/09 at 2:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by DrA View Post

I got WD Velociraptor 300G and even the burst rate tops at 128MB/s or at 1Gb/s.

Is my hdd performance good or how can I make it better? will raid 0 by adding another expensive Velociraptor 300G improve the speed?

DrA: IMO, your transfer rates look about right for a single drive. However, your burst rate looks low to me. Did you double check to make sure the on-board cache is enabled?

RAID 0 will definitely help, no question about it. Check my HDTune and numbers below... and this for (2) WD 640GB Blacks in RAID 0 on an ASUS P5Q with writeback cache enabled.




Quote:
Originally Posted by ogormask View Post

2 x WD Raptor 36gb Raid 0 (my server c

HD Tune: Intel Raid 0 Volume Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 5.9 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 124.4 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 94.9 MB/sec
Access Time : 8.8 ms
Burst Rate : 100.8 MB/sec
CPU Usage : -1.0%

My servers Areca 1261ml controller with 11 Seagate 1.5tb 7200.11 drives and 2 WD 1.5tb Green drives:

HD Tune: Areca ARC-1261-VOL#00 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 17.8 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 620.4 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 302.6 MB/sec
Access Time : 13.3 ms
Burst Rate : 584.0 MB/sec
CPU Usage : -1.0%

And finally the OCZ 120gb Vertex:

HD Tune: OCZ-VERTEX v1.10 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 35.2 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 173.3 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 140.7 MB/sec
Access Time : 0.1 ms
Burst Rate : 170.4 MB/sec
CPU Usage : -1.0%

The vertex is the 2nd fastest but is it worth $400 for that extra speed?

Same format, just to make it easy to compare.

(2) WD Black 640GB drives, RAID 0, 125GB partition on each, writeback cache enabled

Transfer Rate Minimum : 98.8 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 225.3 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 209.1 MB/sec
Access Time : 8.7 ms
Burst Rate : 988.8 MB/sec
CPU Usage : -1.0%





Quote:
Originally Posted by andersa View Post

Even with RAID-0?

Yes, I believe so. My RAID 0 as listed above rates a 5.9. A friend with 4 WD VR's in RAID10 also scored a 5.9.
LL
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post #27 of 28
12/23/09 at 5:46am
Derek I think it would be similar to what other benchmarks show for this drive or what the rated speed is. I know I ran a test when I first got it. I guess I am more for real world speeds which I think shows well in that 2nd test after the firmware update. That OCZ thread says that since the iometer tests basically resets the drive I think then thats the max speed right then. Although how much free space you have might affect things.
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post #28 of 28
12/23/09 at 5:50am
Anandtech's tests showed that speed is directly related to free space. If you have very little free space, the drive doesn't have much to work with and it's a lot harder for it to work optimally.
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