10 TB for $1,000: Tom’s Hardware's Über RAID Array

Throughput And Transfer Diagrams

Since none of the standard benchmark tools allow serious benchmarking on partitions larger than 2 TB, we had to move to HD Tach and IOmeter to get decent results. HD Tach could only be used as long as there was no GPT or MBR on the partition.

As mentioned above, 115 MB/s is the maximum read throughput for an individual F1 drive. With 12 drives tethered to the Areca ARC-1680iX card, our RAID 0 config returned almost 1 GB/s on average. Even in RAID 5, we saw 910 MB/s average throughput!

Write throughput is a bit slower, but we still observed 800 MB/s or more. Keep in mind that these are the average results. Peak numbers are higher, minimum transfer rates somewhat slower.

Transfer Diagram RAID 0

In RAID 0, the array with 12 drives mostly maintains read performance of almost 900 MB/s, but there are some negative peaks. Write throughput is more constant at 600 to 700 MB/s.

Transfer Diagram RAID 5

RAID 5 performance is slightly lower, as it drops below 600 MB/s once most of the 11 TB capacity is filled.