Solid State Disk Drives Are Here

RAID With Flash Hard Drives

SanDisk was kind enough to provide two SSDs for this review, because we wanted to see how they would perform when setup in a RAID 0 array. Flash SSDs are much more robust, don’t suffer from physical impact and endure higher operation temperatures (up to 70°C, depending on the model). Given its robustness, RAID 0 is more attractive for flash SSD compared to conventional hard drives, which can crash from one day to the next. Also, a potential sweet spot for future flash drives is RAID 0 with two flash SSDs.

Test Setup

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System Hardware
Processor(s)2x Intel Xeon Processor (Nocona core)3.6 GHz, FSB800, 1 MB L2 Cache
PlatformAsus NCL-DS (Socket 604)Intel E7520 Chipset, BIOS 1005
RAMCorsair CM72DD512AR-400 (DDR2-400 ECC, reg.)2x 512 MB, CL3-3-3-10 Timings
System Hard DriveWestern Digital Caviar WD1200JB120 GB, 7,200 RPM, 8 MB Cache, UltraATA/100
Mass Storage Controller(s)Intel 82801EB UltraATA/100 Controller (ICH5)Promise SATA 300TX4Promise FastTrak TX4310Driver 2.06.1.310
NetworkingBroadcom BCM5721 On-Board Gigabit Ethernet NIC
Graphics CardOn-Board GraphicsATI RageXL, 8 MB
System Hardware
Performance-Messungenc’t h2benchw 3.6
PCMark05V1.01
I/O PerformanceIOMeter 2003.05.10Fileserver-BenchmarkWebserver-BenchmarkDatabase-BenchmarkWorkstation-Benchmark
System Software & Drivers
OSMicrosoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, Service Pack 1
Platform DriverIntel Chipset Installation Utility 7.0.0.1025
Graphics DriverDefault Windows Graphics Driver