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Seagate
Barracuda ES.2
1 Terabyte SATA
Enterprise Level Hard Drive
Testing:
For
testing we'll be using ClubOC's water cooled rig that started with
Swiftech's Quiet Power P180 water cooled chassis. We then added the
EVGA 680i motherboard, an Intel C2D E6700, Mushkin Extreme Performance
XP2-8500 DDR2, and a pair of EVGA GeForce 7600GT video cards. Last we
added the 2x 1Tb 7200.11 SATA Hard Drives.
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Hardware |
Model |
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Motherboard: |
EVGA nForce 680i SLI |
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Motherboard BIOS Version: |
NF68P25 |
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Platform Drivers: |
nForce 680i v9.53 |
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CPU |
Intel C2D E6700 |
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Memory |
Mushkin Extreme Performance
XP2-8500 5-5-4-12
2Gb Kit |
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Video Cards |
2x EVGA GeForce 7600GT
Running in SLI |
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Video Card Drivers |
NVIDIA Forceware v93.71 |
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Hard Drive |
2x 1000Gb Seagate Barracuda ES.2
SATA Hard Drives
PN: ST31000340NS |
 For
the bulk of the hard drive benchmarking I'll be using
Hard Drive Tach. HD Tach has proven very
reliable for us over the years and I like to stick with what works.
The following tests will be
conducted using the EVGA 680i onboard SATA controller. I'll start out
with one hard drive and work our way up to the two drives running in
RAID 0.
Single Hard Drive Test
Hard Drive Tach - 8Mb Zones
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Burst Speed: |
130.6 MB/s |
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Average Read: |
87.3 MB/s |
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Average Write: |
61.1 MB/s |
With the very first
single drive 8Mb zone benchmark I noticed right away that there is a
slight drop in the average read speed when compared to
Seagate's
Barracuda 7200.11 1Tb hard drive (comparison on page 4). I don't want to pass judgment
right away, but this is a fairly large drop in performance when compared
to the Barracuda 7200.11. Although disappointing, we need to keep in
mind that this hard drive is built for reliability and longevity. Let's
press on to the single drive 32Mb zone benchmark.
Single Hard Drive Test
Hard Drive Tach - 32Mb Zones
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Burst Speed: |
130.3 MB/s |
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Average Read: |
87.3 MB/s |
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Average Write: |
76.3 MB/s |
This time
the performance gap of the Barracuda ES.2 closes when compared to
the Barracuda 7200.11 (comparison on page 4). The performance seen here is more like what I
was expecting to see out of a Serial ATA hard drive.
Single Hard Drive Test
HD
Tune: Read Only
As
I've mentioned in the past, I don't like
HD Tune as much as HD Tach, but it
does show us another point of view as to the performance of this hard
drive. HD Tune shows us the minimum, maximum, and average hard transfer rate. It also
shows hard drive access time, burst rate and CPU usage. On the single
hard drive test, HD Tune shows the following information:
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Minimum Transfer Rate: |
50.2 MB/sec |
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Maximum Transfer Rate: |
100.8 MB/sec |
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Average Transfer Rate: |
83.3 MB/sec |
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Access Time: |
12.9 ms |
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Burst Rate: |
61.8 MB/sec |
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CPU Usage: |
3.9% |
HD Tune is showing very good
numbers for a Serial ATA hard drive. As you will see on the following
page, the number are very close to that
of the Barracuda 7200.11
(comparison on page 4), however the most notable change is the
decrease in CPU Usage. Although it's only about a .5% decrease in CPU
usage, any hard drive that can show a decrease in CPU usage is
impressive.
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