Maxtor DiamondMax 11 and Seagate Barracuda 7200.9

Test participants and methods of testing performance

This article uses the same contenders and test procedure as in the previous review. 500 GB hard drives from Hitachi are represented by SATA models of Deskstar 7K500 HDS725050KLA360 and Deskstar T7K500 HDT725050VLA360 families with 16 MB buffers as in our models under review - Maxtor DiamondMax 11 6H500F0 and Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST3500641AS (see designations of tested samples at these links). Along with 400 GB models, we've also included a top Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6B300S0 300 GB SATA (the one with 100 GB platters, not the updated model). It comes with a 16 MB buffer, which is used by Maxtor drives very efficiently.

The hard drives are mounted firmly on the metal racks of a testbed chassis and connected to SiI3124-2 (on PCI32/33 bus) and ICH5R bridge (on the motherboard) controllers (by the way, Seagate ST3500641AS refused to work with ICH5R on this motherboard). Results of hard drives with different controllers are published in different parts of diagrams. The drives were tested with the SiI3124-2 controller in default mode (with NCQ support) and with disabled NCQ (in drivers) on the side of the controller, in order to watch the NCQ effect (good or bad) in this or that task (as well as NCQ drawbacks in these drives).

Baseline Test Results

First of all, we are going to publish linear reading graphs (click on them to see full-size pictures).

Maxtor DiamondMax 11 6H500F0	Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST3500641AS
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6B300S0	Seagate NL35 ST3400832NS v5.00
Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 (500GB)	Seagate B7200.8 ST3400832AS v3.02
Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 (500GB)	Samsung SpinPoint T133S HD401LJ
Hitachi Deskstar 7K400	WDC SE16 WD4000KD

Linear access rates of the top DiamondMax 11 model are higher by 12-15% than in the top DiamondMax 10 drive, which uses 100 GB platters of the previous generation. That is, the progress is evident (it has to do with the higher data density.) Unfortunately, it cannot be said about the top Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 with 125 GB platters, which is 15-18% SLOWER in linear access rate than top models of the previous generation with 133 GB platters! Is density/rate sacrificed to reliability or what? ;)

We can only note as a consolation that it was not easy for Maxtor: the graph of the 6H500F0 is much less "solid" (smooth and reproducible) than that of the 6B300S0, especially the drop in linear access rate relative to the maximum value (ideal case), which is noticeable at the fastest outer zone of magnetic platters. The effect of intermittent recording on outer tracks is even more noticeable in this hard drive (see the following screenshot of HD Tach 3.0.1.0).

By the way, that may be the fault of few vibration sensors on board of the controller in Maxtor DiamondMax 11, because a similar hard drive from Seagate, fully equipped with accelerometers, does not demonstrate the effect of intermittent access to outer tracks on the graphs.

Compared to 400 GB and 500 GB hard drives from other manufacturers, these models under review do not look like record-breakers. While Maxtor managed to demonstrate the best results among 7K models (before SpinPoint T133 and Deskstar T7K500), Seagate ST3500641AS is outperformed in linear access rates even by ancient hard drives with 100 GB platters. :(

There are almost no surprises in Serial ATA interface transfer rates:

Maxtor drives are ones of the best here (especially DM11). Barracuda 7200.9 demonstrates a tad lower speed (though it's higher than in 7200.8). When NCQ support is disabled at the host side, the interface rate of most hard drives (measured with these utilities) grows a little (it may have to do with some latencies to process requests in case of NCQ).

The 4-platter Maxtor 6H500F0 is evidently slower in the average access time for reading than its three-platter predecessor Maxtor 6B300S0 - by a whole millisecond! It's outperformed by most hard drives of the same class, but not much. This parameter has also dropped (although to a smaller degree) in the 4-platter Seagate ST3500641AS (compared to 3-platter Barracudas 7200.8). What concerns the Quiet Seek mode in Maxtor drives, you can see everything on the diagram. It's almost inaudible against the background rotational noise, while eight pairs of heads in Maxtor and Seagate are quite loud in Fast Seek mode. :)

We can try to evaluate the efficiency of firmware procedures of lazy write and caching data for writing by the drop of the average write access time, measured under an operating system, relative to the read access time with enabled write-back caching. For this purpose we use the results of H2benchW and IOmeter.

Maxtor has offered impressive data caching for writing in its hard drives with 16 MB buffers since DiamondMax 10. The 11th series has taken up the initiative of the 10th series, although the 6H500F0 demonstrates weaker results here (probably owing to the generally slower seek rates). Alas, we cannot praise Seagate ST3500641AS here either, it's outperformed by all other contenders in this operation, including its predecessor.

It's fully confirmed by similar tests in Iometer. It's clear that Seagate's firmware uses inefficiently the 16 MB buffer for caching data in small blocks for writing, while Maxtor favors it.

Another illustrative test of HDD firmware efficiency is the read/write speed for files of various sizes with various block sizes from 512 bytes to 1 MB. For this purpose we use ATTO Disk Benchmark. The screenshots below display the results for six sizes of a test file - 128 KB, 1 MB, 4 MB, 8 MB, 16 MB, and 32 MB. While the first and the second file sizes are cached in the disk buffer as a rule (caching read/write data for a 1MB file is not that simple), there is simply no room to fit in the last file size. Caching the other file sizes depends not only on the buffer size, but also on the hard disk firmware.

128 KB test file:
Maxtor DM11 6H500F0	Seagate ST3500641AS	Maxtor DM10 6B300S0
1 MB test file:
Maxtor DM11 6H500F0	Seagate ST3500641AS	Maxtor DM10 6B300S0
4 MB test file:
Maxtor DM11 6H500F0	Seagate ST3500641AS	Maxtor DM10 6B300S0
8 MB test file:
Maxtor DM11 6H500F0	Seagate ST3500641AS	Maxtor DM10 6B300S0
16 MB test file:
Maxtor DM11 6H500F0	Seagate ST3500641AS	Maxtor DM10 6B300S0
32 MB test file:
Maxtor DM11 6H500F0	Seagate ST3500641AS	Maxtor DM10 6B300S0

We can draw the following conclusions from these test results.

Firstly, the speed of these drives with 128 KB and 1 MB files differs. It depends much on NCQ (or no NCQ). And Maxtor DM11 acts just like its predecessor DM10 in many respects (though not all of them) in this test. Without NCQ, Maxtors demonstrate low read rate with small blocks. They manage to reach a high anticipatory reading rate only with 128 KB blocks and larger, but only if NCQ is enabled. On the whole, Maxtor demonstrates higher sequential read rates with small blocks of 1 MB files. But anticipatory reading is less efficient in this case even with NCQ. Fortunately, Seagate ST3500641AS is free of the above-mentioned drawbacks and demonstrates excellent transfer rates with caching.

Secondly, performance of the Seagate hard drive drops significantly with 4 MB files (compared to 1 MB files): the hard drive almost stops caching data for reading, data caching for writing gets noticeably worse (especially with NCQ enabled). On the contrary, Maxtor drives cache large files for writing just as well as small files, especially with NCQ. And the reading rate evidently gets better, reading becomes less dependent on NCQ.

Thirdly, the switch to 8 MB files has almost no effect on Maxtor performance (they are cached almost just as efficiently for writing, little depends on NCQ, and the reading rate got higher, although there are no signs of anticipatory reading). But the Seagate hard drive practically does not use its 16 MB buffer to cache such files. It demonstrates the same performance as with larger files (limited to the speed of the physical medium).

And finally, the largest 32 MB files (almost streaming operation) are processed at the speed of the physical media (Maxtor 6H500F0 has an obvious advantage here). But NCQ slows down the process a little both in Maxtor and Seagate hard drives.

Let's see how it affects HDD performance in consumer applications.