ADAPTEC ASR-51245 + 4x SEAGATE CHEETAH 15K.6 450GB

Test Results

Just like old-school Adaptec products, you can manipulate RAID settings in the RAID BIOS.  We prefer the GUI, and Adaptec's latest Storage Manager software looks like this:

Although written in Java, it has improved over the years.  ASM is now more responsive, never hung or froze once in our testing, and is rather informative and helpful to even more novice users.  Only thing it requires is a non-blank OS login password.

Here are the all-important test results:

HDTach 3.0.1.0 8MB Zones, ASR-51245 + 2x 15k.6 450GB, RAID-0, 16k stripe

HDTach 3.0.1.0 32MB Zones, ASR-51245 + 2x 15k.6 450GB, RAID-0, 16k stripe

ATTO Benchmark, ASR-51245 + 2x 15k.6 450GB, RAID-0, 16k stripe

HDTach 3.0.1.0 8MB Zones, ASR-51245 + 2x 15k.6 450GB, RAID-0, 1024k stripe

HDTach 3.0.1.0 32MB Zones, ASR-51245 + 2x 15k.6 450GB, RAID-0, 1024k stripe

ATTO Benchmark, ASR-51245 + 2x 15k.6 450GB, RAID-0, 1024k stripe

HDTach 3.0.1.0 8MB Zones, ASR-51245 + 2x 15k.6 450GB, RAID-1

HDTach 3.0.1.0 32MB Zones, ASR-51245 + 2x 15k.6 450GB, RAID-1

ATTO Benchmark, ASR-51245 + 2x 15k.6 450GB, RAID-1

Excellent performance.  Although, we see write anomalies at chunks of 128k and larger. Adaptec can surely fix this with a driver/firmware update.  It doesn't seem to be hardware/architecture-related.

As for environmental observations, the 15k.6 maintains a similar noise profile as previous generations, not making too much of a buzzing sound from the platters.  Seeks are more prominent when the drive is solidly mounted in a chassis.  Isolating rubber grommets can alleviate this. 

As for temperature, its hot.  134F to be exact when seeking for a few minutes doing some HDTach testing.  Active cooling is definitely needed.

UPDATE:  Test results with 4x Cheetah 15k.6 Below!

RAID-0 with 1024k stripe

RAID-0 with 16k stripe

RAID-0 with 256k stripe