Which hard drive for applications

[clouser]

I recently purchased an OCZ 64GB SSD for a boot drive, and a new Samsung SpinPoint F4 2TB drive for data. I still have my older Seagate 320GB 7200 RPM drive, which was "high end" at the time. Since the SpinPoint is only 5400rpm, I was planning to keep the 7200RPM drive for apps. However, CrystalDisk shows the 5400RPM drive outperforming the 7200RPM drive on almost every test.

Do you think I should just dump the Seagate, or is there more to the picture?



SpinPoint
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 78.580 MB/s
Sequential Write : 74.441 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 31.629 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 26.988 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.416 MB/s [ 101.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.591 MB/s [ 144.2 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.613 MB/s [ 149.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.600 MB/s [ 146.6 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [D: 40.0% (48.0/119.8 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2011/01/25 15:21:10
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition [6.1 Build 7600] (x64)





Seagate
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 67.032 MB/s
Sequential Write : 65.226 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 26.161 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 26.467 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.347 MB/s [ 84.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.664 MB/s [ 162.2 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.596 MB/s [ 145.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.680 MB/s [ 165.9 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [F: 19.2% (34.1/178.0 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2011/01/25 15:32:05
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition [6.1 Build 7600] (x64)

 

[WyomingKnott]

How old is the Seagate drive? It's perfectly reasonable for a new 5.4 to outperform an old 7.2. Use the faster drive. Actually, unless you have 20 GB of apps, install them on the SSD!

That said, those are pretty slow transfer speeds. If I saw that on my machine, I would
1) speed-test the SSD to see if I have a general speed problem with the controller
2) Get a Caviar Black HD and speed-test it, then compare the results against what shows in Tom's reviews. If it's significantly slower than it should be, you have a problem other than the drives. If it's as fast as it should be, use it for apps.

Hope that this hits the mark.

 

[clouser]

I am installing some apps like Photoshop on the SSD, but the disk space goes quickly...

Anything I should be looking at? The PC is a Dell XPS 630i E8400, about 1.5 yrs old. This is a freshly installed OS ( Win7 x64).... I'm supprised the disk performance seems so low in general. The SSD is an OCZ Agility 2.

I did think it was odd that defrag was still enabled for C:, meaning it wasn't properly detected as an SSD. I did verify TRIM was enabled and I disabled defrag. I have no option in the BIOS to enable or disable AHCI, so I am assuming it is enabled.

I had read a link somewhere that Intel had a seperate storage driver that might be better, but I didn't know if it was commonly accepted:
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/3116/tweaktown_s_solid_state_drive_optimization_guide/index4.html



Here is a screen cap from some review site, I am assuming my numbers are somewhat slower since I am actively booted onto the OS, and they would be running the test with no compating processes:

And here are my numbers:

SSD
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 193.661 MB/s
Sequential Write : 61.288 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 188.461 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 68.067 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 19.678 MB/s [ 4804.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 59.826 MB/s [ 14606.0 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 85.729 MB/s [ 20929.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 63.675 MB/s [ 15545.6 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: 33.5% (18.7/55.9 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2011/01/26 10:08:26
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition [6.1 Build 7600] (x64)

 

[WyomingKnott]

Hmm. The RST (Rapid Storage Technology) drivers are well-accepted; certainly by me. I use them with SSD and HD in Win7 and WinXP.

Well, the SSD performance looks happy, except for the Spinpoint writing faster in sequential writes. Smells like you haven't been passing TRIM, which I kind of expect if you haven't installed the RST. But I could be wrong.

The Seq. Reads are reasonable, and the Seq. Reads on your two hard drives suck. Tom's charts ( http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-3.5-desktop-hard-drive-charts/h2benchw-3.12-Avg-Read-Throughput,1010.html ) show average read throughput above 100 MB/s for smaller F4s, not the 2 TB. What do the specs on the mfg site show?

 

[clouser]

i downloaded RST for Windows 7x64, but the installer quits out saying I don't meet the requirements. I just checked, and it looks like the RST is intended for use with Intel chipsets only, and I forgot the XPS boxes are nForce. I'll install the latest nForce drivers from NVIDIA, maybe they have better performance than the OEM driver with Windows 7.

 

[clouser]

Installing the latest nForce drivers did nothing to improve performance.

 

[clouser]

According to this post, the nForce 650i chipset used in the Dell 630i does not support AHCI or TRIM. I suppose that is part of the problem.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/storage/34008-not-too-sure-ssd-nforce-650i-chipset.html


Knowing that now, is there anything I can do to manually provide garbage collection or other tasks to improve performance?