Anybody use "HD Tune" to record high throughput? ... PATA or SATA, non-RAID. FWIW... I've got about a dozen HDs, and the fastest measures about 85mps (second fastest is 67mps, and it's PATA... go figure). Average for the other HDs is about 54mps. Fastest = Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250410AS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150014+1035507821&name=10,000+RPM http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150014+1035507779&name=15,000+RPM
In fact my WDC WD1500ADFD-150 Gb 16 Mb cache is about on that range with a maximum of 83.80 MB/sec max.
Peak linear throughput is virtually irrelevant to hard drive performance in the real world. Seek time dominates throughput in most usage patterns with a traditional filesystem. The Raptors are fast drives mostly because their seek time is better than twice as fast as 7200rpm drives. Combination of lower rotational latency, fast actuator and smaller platter diameter. Martin
By peak linear throughput I mean no seeks. Consecutive track read performance. You can call it sustained if you want, but there's no way you're going to sustain that sort of data rate in real world usage. There's a big difference between throughput on inner and outer tracks. So technically peak throughput would occur on outer tracks. Hopefully your benchmark is smart enough to average across the whole platter. Martin
This is what you want: "Solid State Disk Drives Are Here" http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/08/13/flash_based_hard_drives_cometh/
Honestly Martin, I don't really know what it's measuring. However, it does indicate outer tracks to be faster than inner, of course. You can check it out yourself it you like. It's commonly used and is free... HD Tune.