Three 2.5" SAS Drives: Enterprise Data Giants, Compared
Features
By
Achim Roos, Manuel Masiero
Published
Currently, 2.5" enterprise drives are leaving their 3.5” competitors behind. They're faster, more flexible, and now they offer comparable capacities (we're up to 1 TB now). In this piece, it's Hitachi versus Seagate battling for high-density supremacy.
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Comparison Table, Test Configuration, And Transfer Diagrams
Comparison Table
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| Manufacturer | Hitachi | Seagate | Seagate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Family | Ultrastar C10K600 | Constellation.2 | Savvio 10K.5 |
| Model | HUC106060CSS600 | ST91000640SS | ST9900805SS |
| Form factor | 2.5“ | 2.5“ | 2.5“ |
| Capacity | 600 GB | 1000 GB | 900 GB |
| RPM | 10 000 RPM | 7200 RPM | 10 000 RPM |
| Further capacities | 450, 300 GB | 250, 500 GB | 600, 450, 300 GB |
| Platter | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Cache | 64 MB | 64 MB | 64 MB |
| Interface | SAS 6Gb/s | SAS 6Gb/s | SAS 6Gb/s |
| Operating temperature | 5-55 °C | 5-60 °C | 5-55 °C |
| No-load power according to spec | 3.1 W | 3.9 W | 4.4 W |
| No-load power according to test | 3.6 W | 4.3 W | 5.0 W |
| Operating shock (2 ms, Read) | 60 G | 70 G | 40 G |
| Warranty | 5 years | 5 years | 5 years |
Test Setup
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| System Hardware | |
|---|---|
| Hardware | Details |
| CPU | Intel Core i7-920 (Bloomfield) (45 nm, 2.66 GHz, 8 MB L3 Cache) |
| Motherboard(Socket 1366) | Supermicro X8SAX, Revision: 1.1, Chipset: Intel X58 + ICH10R, BIOS: 1.0B |
| RAM | 3 x 1 GB DDR3-1333 Corsair CM3X1024-1333C9DHX |
| HDD | Seagate NL35 400 GB, ST3400832NS, 7200 RPM, SATA 1.5Gb/s, 8 MB Cache |
| Storage Controller | HighPoint Rocket 620, Marvell 88SE9128 |
| PSU | OCZ EliteXstream 800 W, OCZ800EXS-EU |
| Benchmarks | |
| Performance Measurements | h2benchw 3.13 PCMark Vantage 1.0 |
| I/O Performance | IOMeter 2006.07.27 Fileserver-Benchmark Webserver-Benchmark Database-Benchmark Workstation-Benchmark Streaming Reads Streaming Writes |
| System-Software & Drivers | |
| Operating System | Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 |
Transfer Diagrams
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2 Comments
Comment from the forums
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compton Toms with some more review niceness. Thanks for another interesting article. I don't think mechanical storage is going anywhere soon. For better and worse we'll still have it around for a long, long time to come. Even when SSDs hit that magical speed/capacity/cost point to be ubiquitous for mainstream consumers, enterprises will still need HDDs as part of their storage needs. HDDs are at least a known quantity that are still getting better.Reply -
bit_user 3rd paragraph: "have to be taken into considered". You also didn't mention capacity and cost/GB, where mechanical disks still reign supreme.Reply
Also, why not benchmark a 3.5" disk, but only use the outer portion. If both that and a 2.5" have the same density and rotational velocity, then the 3.5" should win due to higher I/O speeds resulting from higher linear velocity.