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Enterprise Storage Solutions Solid Integration for Enthusiasts
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1. Business Hard Drives By Seagate And Western Digital

The majority of our readership consists of power users who have an affection for squeezing the last bit of performance out of their systems. To meet the clarion call of these niche markets, manufacturers have responded by moving away from selling solely generic products. They now offer specialized professional class products; although made for multi-user environments, these can be integrated into home systems as well.

The new Seagate Barracuda ES models are hard drives that are validated for professional environments where capacity, data integrity and long duty cycles are prime considerations. The smaller Western Digital Raptor ADFD models hope to carry the reputation of Western Digital's desktop performance and reliability into the large scale storage market. WD currently is the only company utilizing a 10,000 RPM rotation speed for entry-level and mainstream enterprise SATA drives; its competition is still using 7,200 RPM spindles for its SATA disks.

The target market presents a need for the two drastically different drives we review here. The 7,200 RPM Seagate Barracuda ES, utilizing SATA/300, is a storage/service monster available in 250 GB to 750 GB capacities. The 74 GB Western Digital Raptor offers less capacity and only utilizes SATA/150, yet it is a much better performer. It is a lower capacity version of the popular and speedy Raptor-X 150 GB, and is fine-tuned to the demands of wide area storage and speedy server access.

Both drives feature Native Command Queuing (NCQ), which optimizes data pickup along the spin sequence according to file or sector location. This helps to minimize seek times while optimizing transfer rates and data access. The image below provides a general schematic of the NCQ process.

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2. Seagate Barracuda ES Utilizes Perpendicular Recording

The new Barracudas are able to pack such a large amount of storage into the 3.5" form factor by utilizing a new recording technology known as perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR). This technology reorients the vector of the data recording line from horizontal to vertical magnetization. This technology has allowed Seagate to pack impressive drive capacities into small packages. Some insight into PMR can be gleaned from our original Seagate 7200.10 "big boy" shootout.

Created for demanding enterprise environments, one of Seagate's calling cards in the ES series is a declared failure rate of 0.73% (AFR) while experiencing full day operation. Seagate claims that the maximum non-recoverable read errors per bits figure is only 1 sector per 1014 versus <1 sector per 1015 for the Raptor ADFD series. In any multiple drive environment, intrinsic stress or vibration from external drive units can create problems leading to read/write errors, system/drive availability and overall performance. The ES series relies on built-in multi-drive firmware, which controls its rotational vibration tolerance to attempt to reduce these effects.

3. Western Digital Raptor WD740 ADFD

Western Digital has released several capacity points of its popular 10,000 RPM Raptor drive, ranging from 36 GB to the familiar 150 GB. WD combines the SATA interface with a 10,000 RPM spindle to crank out performance. Much like the Barracuda's onboard sensors that guard against vibration-prone environments, WD has included its own proprietary technology known as Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF). Users may be disappointed to see the discontinuance of the see-through plate on the ADFD versions of the Raptor, which was some cool eye candy on the Raptor-X, which has been replaced with an opaque plate concealing drive mechanics. After the first few times watching the head movement, though, how many people really care?

The mechanical similarity of both platforms when compared to their non-ES counterparts caused us to anticipate congruent test results. So let's take a look at the numbers.

4. Test Configuration
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
Mass Storage Controller(s) Intel 82801EB UltraATA/100 Controller (ICH5)
Silicon Image Sil3124, PCI-X
Networking Broadcom BCM5721 On-Board Gigabit Ethernet NIC
Graphics Card On-Board Graphics
ATI RageXL, 8 MB
System Hardware
Performance Measurements c’t h2benchw 3.6
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

Benchmark Results

Data Transfer Diagrams

5. IOMeter

6. Access Time

Our Western Digital 74 GB entry beats the other Raptors (except the Raptor 150) and shares the title for new king of the heap - it has the best performance this side of a solid state drive. The score of the Barracuda ES is down the way a bit, and is almost identical to that of its 750 GB "cousin", the Seagate 7200.10.

Interface Transfer Rate

The Barracuda scores higher running SATA/300 and the SATA/150 Raptor significantly less. As we'll see in tests applied to real world numbers, though, interface bandwidth does not necessarily correspond to higher performance at all.

7. Read Transfer Rates

Western Digital's 74 GB ADFD takes the performance lead in drives tested according to h2benchw 3.6, with an average transfer of 75.3 MB/s. This is 20.1% higher than the Barracuda ES.

Write Transfer Rates

The Western Digital 74 GB ADFD is again at the top of the heap with a write speed of 74.7 MB/s, again, 20.1% faster than the Barracuda.

8. Drive Surface Temperature

Seagate has implemented a workload management system, which it claims will help to lower ambient temperature. The temperature we recorded was 124°F, which hits mid-range according to our tests. This is ~51°C, within Seagate's 55°C specification, and not cause for too much concern. In a multi-unit arena, however, it could become a performance/potential failure issue. On the other hand, such storage appliances would be ventilated much better than our test sample, which we operated on an open table.

Heat becomes an important consideration for unit longevity, especially when dealing with something spinning at 7,200 or 10,000 RPM. Decreasing ambient temperatures throughout the tower through use of system/drive coolers leads to greater reliability and can become extremely important when multiple drives are used.

Windows XP Startup Performance

It's interesting to note that the Raptor 74 GB ADFD finished behind others in the Raptor line in this particular test. The Barracuda was near the bottom of the pack, reporting in at just under eight seconds.

9. File Write Performance

According to our PCMark05 results, the Raptor 74 GB ADFD finished second, only 0.6 MB/s off the mark of the Raptor WD1500AD. The Barracuda ES wasn't too far behind, with a respectable transfer rate of 75.3 MB/s.

Conclusion

We've spoken about this before, but here's another example where drive interface bandwidth differences measured between first generation SATA/150 and the newer SATA/300 have little real impact. Our tests also confirm our expectations with regard to the Seagate models; the perpendicular-recording ES realized similar results to those of the original Barracuda 7200.10. The same held true for the Raptor series, except that the WD740ADFD presented scores almost identical to the Raptor 150 GB WD1500AD.

The Raptors are solid drives that continue the high-performance tradition of the Western Digital line, and pump out the numbers we've come to expect. Size differences across the Raptor line should allow users to tailor performance and save a few bucks by going with smaller capacities if they're using the drive to do only their system's "fast work". Seagate showcases solid performance and especially capacious models, which allows users to choose a drive they won't need to upgrade as often due to lack of storage space.

Those who wish to integrate the units into actual enterprise environments will be well served by both offerings, due to their solid transfer rates, reliability and reduced access times. As with most enterprise orientations, both Seagate and Western Digital feature a five-year warranty on their offerings.

Author's Opinion

These are both solid drives, each catered towards different tasks and easily integrated into single user environments. I'd take the new Raptor 74 GB ADFD for a speedy system boot and optimal transfer speed. The smaller drive size wouldn't be a problem; I'd just implement a secondary Seagate giant to act as a file storage area, still giving decent transfer rates. Readers can combine these drives' diverse feature sets, leading to the perfect marriage of size and performance, while taking advantage of the ES designation for increased reliability.

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