|
SEAGATE BARRACUDA ES.2 SAS
Introduction
Last year we benchmarked
the Barracuda ES.2 1TB SATA HDD and it performed
remarkably well. The difference between that
drive and this new ES.2 is the interface: SAS
vs SATA, and half the cache, 16MB vs 32MB. SAS
has many advantages over SATA, just like how SCSI
offers many features PATA did not even come close to
having. But these advantages are more related
to applications, connectivity, deployment,
topologies, and not really about performance because
both SATA (3 Gbps) and SAS can communicate at 3 GBps.
So let's see if we can measure any improvements over
the SATA ES.2 ..
The testbed used is
comprised of the following components:
The operating system is
Windows XP Professional 64-bit Edition.
Seagate Barracuda ES.2 specifications:
The Barracuda ES.2 SAS
has a very similar appearance to its SATA sibling:
So here we go.
These are the test results of the ES.2 SAS in single-drive
configuration:
HDTach 3.0.1.0, 8MB Zones
HDTach 3.0.1.0, 32MB Zones
ATTO Disk Benchmark
For comparison,
here is
the SATA ES.2 test results page.
Strangely, the SATA ES.2 had better write
performance in ATTO, up to 98MB/s whereas the SAS
ES.2 seemed to hit an 84MB/s brick wall. As for
reads, the SAS hit an impressive 122MB/s while the
SATA achieved a less impressive 100MB/s. This
122MB/s read speed is even faster than the recently
crowned Samsung Spinpoint F1, with 32MB cache, but
SATA interconnect.
Now let's see some
RAID-0 benchmarks:
HDTach 3.0.1.0, 8MB Zones,
RAID-0
HDTach 3.0.1.0, 32MB Zones,
RAID-0
ATTO Benchmark, RAID-0
And let's check out
RAID-1 as well...
HDTach 3.0.1.0, 8MB Zones,
RAID-1
HDTach 3.0.1.0, 32MB Zones,
RAID-1
ATTO Benchmark, RAID-1
Superlative performance
again from Seagate! Bravo, bravo! Solid
SAS implementation with unbeatable warranty and MTBF
ratings. Insane read speeds, but writes can
use some help beyond 500GB as shown in the HDTach
tests. If there was a 97%
graphic, I would use it. But between 90 and
100, I would rather award the ES.2 SAS the 100%
Redline Tachometer:
|
