Storage Forums: How StorageReview.com Tests Hard Drives - Storage Forums

Last November, StorageReview.com debuted its third-generation testbed. This comprehensive overhaul brought changes to the hardware, operating systems, benchmarks, and methodology behind SR. Consistent test platforms featuring a minimum of change have been the hallmark of SR over the last three years. This is as close as it gets to required reading for both site regulars as well as the occasional visitor. How are drives judged? What motives exist behind the methodology revision? What do the benchmarks measure? All this and more is answered in this sweeping article. You can't afford to miss this one!

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/2001...aissance_1.html

I've just read this again (to see if it offered any insight into the "correct" way to work out seek time from access time). One thing I noticed was the apparent importance of burst rate, due to the likelyhood of cache hits:

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In the light of this, it would seem possible the Maxtor ATA drives may benefit from using UDMA-133 as opposed to UDMA-100. Since TB3 only uses UDMA-100 it would seem that these drives are not being allowed to work at their fullest performance.

Therefore it seems to me that to make fair comparisons, a UDMA-133 compatible controller should be used. At the least, it would seem a good idea to test a current Maxtor drive (eg. DM+9) again using a UDMA-133 controller, testing both in 133 and 100 modes and seeing if there is a significant difference in any tests. If not... then the current tests are valid, but if the difference is significant then I think the published tests should reflect this.

I'm not saying that using UDMA-133 will make much difference; I really don't know.

I'm using UDMA-66 for drive :wink:

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The Promise Ultra133 was used in out DM+9 tests as well as the older 160 DB 540DX review.

Regards,

Eugene

:oops: ok, I see it in the review now -sorry :oops:

I've noticed a "mistake" in your test configurations.
Every time you test a new drive >147GB, you're using an external controller which forbids you from doing write tests and it's limited by the PCI max troughtput of 80MB/s~.

What you didn't noticed, is that upgrading the motherboard firmware of the Intel D850 series enables 48bit LBA(along with several system changes that are noted in the release notes) hence, it would allow you to go back to test with the onboard controller, which is much powerfull than the promise external.

The firmware upgrade doesn't change the storage performance, so it wouldn't invalidate any of your previous tests with the 82801BA

think about it, if the new firmware(P15 i think) isn't satisfactory(because maybe it changed the previous results too much) then you can fall back to the obsolete BIOS you currently use

BTW:I have tried to email both of you about this, but every time my mail is returned like "spam filtered" or something like that......

Out of curiousity, approximately how many hours are spent testing each drive? Both human involved and "it's doing it's thing so it will be 10 hours"*walk away*.

I am new to the site but I did not see any information on SATA controllers used. You also refer to Athalon performance. Where would this data be found?

Thanks and congratulations on your dedicated effort to provide real world performance results.

westcott

I've searched, including scouring the Testbed3 description pages, but I can't seem to find it:

Does StorageReview test with AAM consistently disabled, or does it use whatever mode to which the drives are set by default upon acquisition?

AAM is tested disabled. There has been the rare case where "disabled" was actually the equivalent to a setting less than "enabled @ 254" but it should be assumed that we take all pains to ensure the drive is in optimum seek mode.

Users have growing concerns about PC noise pollution. Do you have any intentions to increase your Noise testing to cover active noise? I would view this as highly beneficial if it can be done in a manner than produces consistent and reliable results.

Love,
Fairy