Showdown Between 7,200 RPM RAID 0 And The Raptor-X

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We used two Seagate NL35 drives running at 7,200 RPM to build a RAID 0 array, which can be considered an alternative to Western Digital's Raptor-X.

We took the new 10,000 RPM WD1500AD Raptor and compared it to a 7,200 RPM RAID 0 array, since this would be the alternative if performance and high capacity are important to you. We took two NL35 drives by Seagate since these were available; technically they are not very different from the Barracuda 7200.8, and thus one of the faster 7,200 RPM models available. We realize that two 400 GB drives would be an investment that easily exceeds the costs of one WD1500 Raptor. However, using two 300 GB drives is doable for roughly the same price, and this should result in a storage subsystem performance that outruns the WD1500 Raptor... or maybe not?

Test Setup

System Hardware
Processor(s) 2x Intel Xeon Processor (Nocona core)
3.6 GHz, FSB800, 1 MB L2 Cache
Platform Asus NCL-DS (Socket 604)
Intel E7520 Chipset, BIOS 1005
RAM Corsair CM72DD512AR-400 (DDR2-400 ECC, reg.)
2x 512 MB, CL3-3-3-10 Timings
System Hard Drive Western Digital Caviar WD1200JB
120 GB, 7,200 rpm, 8 MB Cache, UltraATA/100
Test Hard Drive I "Western Digital WD1500AD Raptor 150 GB, 10,000 rpm, 16 MB Cache, SATA/150"
Test Hard Drive II "Seagate NL35 400 GB, 7,200 rpm, 8 MB Cache, SATA/300"
Mass Storage Controller(s) Intel 82801EB UltraATA/100 Controller (ICH5)
Promise SATA 300TX4
"Promise FastTrak TX4310 Driver 2.06.1.310"
Networking Broadcom BCM5721 On-Board Gigabit Ethernet NIC
Graphics Card On-Board Graphics
ATI RageXL, 8 MB
System Hardware
Performance-Messungen c't h2benchw 3.6 PCMark05 V1.01
I/O Performance IOMeter 2003.05.10
Fileserver-Benchmark
Webserver-Benchmark
Database-Benchmark
Workstation-Benchmark
System Software & Drivers
OS Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, Service Pack 1
Platform Driver Intel Chipset Installation Utility 7.0.0.1025
Graphics Driver Default Windows Graphics Driver

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