3.5'' Vs. 2.5'' SAS HDDs: In Storage, Size Matters
Diminutive 2.5” form factors are favored in the enterprise storage world for many reasons, but how do high-end 2.5” SAS drives compare to the established 3.5” products when it comes to performance and power? We requested some drives and did the analysis.
Benchmark Results: I/O Performance And Access Time
The differences in database I/O performance aren’t huge, but they are noticable. The 2.5” drive does well here.
File server performance isn’t the Ultrastar C15K147's strong suit. The two 3.5” drives deliver better performance in this test.
We found similar results for the Web server test.
Lastly, the workstation test pattern confirms that the 3.5” drives are superior in I/O performance when relying on an individual drive. However, space and power consumption savings enable administrators to operate twice as many 2.5” drives as 3.5” options. In such configurations, the 2.5” array will always outperform 3.5” setups on performance, capacity, and efficiency. Cost might be an issue, but you can always look for the best price/capacity/performance sweet spot.
Access Time
Access times are slightly longer on the 2.5” drive.
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