Plz suggest controller, HDD benchmark & "real world

Peripherals, parts, data storage...
Post Reply
robtom
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Jan 25, 2004 1:32 pm

Plz suggest controller, HDD benchmark & "real world

Post by robtom »

Plz suggest controller, HDD benchmark & "real world" speed

Hello,

I've been a lurker here for a while, and learned much good information. Thanks to all. It seems I should disable the HPT366 controller(s) and use a PCI replacement. Yesterday I spent a lot of time looking at posts for a suggestion for a controller card. Many references were posted in many threads, but the card models and brands are unfamiliar to me.

My post "rambles" on for a while, so I summarized my questions at the bottom. :0( :? :shock:

Time for a question: I just took advantage of OfficeMax's special for Western Digital Special Edition 80GB 7200 RPM Ultra ATA/100 drive, with 8 MB cache. The price after rebates is only $19, so I got one for a friend, too! wink wink ;o) I installed one each onto each HPT366 controller.

System in addition to the HDDs: Win2000 SP3, two matched celeron 500s, 500 MB Kingston SDRAM in two "chips," Matrox Marvel G-400 video w/64MB.

My own benchmark was to divide each new WD HDD into a 10 GB and a 70 GB partition. Before I began the benchmark, I copied several files from my old 5400 RPM Maxtor HDD on the standard IDE channel. I copied 3 GBs of movie files, 7 total, to the new WD 70MB partition. This took about 190 seconds. The files were defragged and on an empty partion of the Maxtor. THey were copied to an empty partition of the new Wd HDD This is about 17 MB/sec sustained.

For my "Official Real World" benchmark, I copied the 7 large video files from empty-new partition F:\ on WD-HDD#2 to empty-new partition D:\ on WD-HDD#1. SUrprisingly, I got about the same results. Shouldn't the faster HDDs on the HPT366 controllers be much faster than when I copied the 7 large files from a Maxtor 5400 RPM HDD on the standard IDE channel?


Note that I did a similar test about 5 years ago on an ASUS T2P4 OC'd to 400 Mhz, a Quantum 7200 RPM 10GB UW to a 5400 RPM IBM DORS UW. The controller was an Adaptec 2940-UW. The speed was also about 1 GB a minute.

Running the performance test from Norton's Sysytem Works 2003, the read and write speeds each show about 33 MB/sec. This is twice what I see in "Real Life."

Questions:

1. What is a good PCI card to replace the HPT366 controller for my system? I'm looking for a mix of reliability and performance. Isn't everybody?

2. What is a reasonable "Real Life" data transfer rate to expect from my system now?

3. If I upgrade my HDD IO by using a PCI card, what "Real Life" speed should I expect?

3. Shouldn't my system with the 7200 RPM drive to a 7200 RPM drive be much faster than the other HDD configurations and systems?

Thanks!
Rob
Post Reply