Maxtor DiamondMax 11 and Seagate Barracuda 7200.9

Intel Iometer tests

We also use special patterns in Intel Iometer to imitate HDD operation in various applications. At first - traditional well-spread patterns, offered by Intel and Storagereview.com - DataBase, File Server, Web Server, and Workstation, which mostly characterize professional usage of hard drives in servers and serious workstations. We'll publish detailed results of only two middle patterns, and the overall diagram will take into account all patterns.

As we can see, Maxtor DiamondMax 11 demonstrates quite low results with small queue depths. But its performance rises sharply with large queue depths owing to NCQ. So it becomes one of the leaders, outperforming even Hitachi T7K500 and WD4000. However, it concerns only mixed operations. If there are no requests for writing, Maxtor's performance drops noticeably (that's obvious considering results of the baseline tests above). Seagate ST3500641AS fares well with small and large queue depths, and NCQ has a definitely positive effect here. But on the whole, it's outperformed by Seagate ST3400832NS of the previous generation. :)

Mean results of these patterns for 4 queue depths (1, 4, 16, and 64) confirm the tendency: DiamondMax 11 is generally weaker here than DiamondMax 10 (with NCQ), although it's not that bad compared to most competitors. And we cannot dismiss the 500 GB model from Seagate in such tasks - it's generally even better than Maxtor hard drives, though it's worse than its predecessor.

Workstation pattern shows a similar situation.

Now it's turn for our Iometer patterns, which are closer to users of regular desktop PCs and near-line applications, though randomness of disk access in these patterns is adequate to a professional profile as well.

NCQ has a negative effect on Maxtor DM11 in the Large File Read or Write test, but its performance here is very high (one of the best in class, especially in writing). What concerns reading, its performance is again worse than that of DM10. Seagate ST3500641AS is not too good at writing here (although it's faster than its predecessor), but it's good at reading.

Maxtor hard drives write small files very fast (that's natural), although DM11 is again slower than DM10. Seagate hard drives are very slow in this task. Nevertheless, both drives demonstrate good results in reading small files, although they don't break any records. They evidently benefit from NCQ.

Maxtor DM11 copes better with Large File Copy at random addresses across the entire disk than top hard drives from Seagate. But they are all evidently outperformed by the leaders here, NCQ can hardly help them here.

On the contrary, NCQ cardinally accelerates the 500 GB hard drive from Maxtor in Small File Copy at random addresses across the entire disk. Other hard drives do not enjoy such a strong effect. However, Seagate ST3500641AS is good here anyway.

The above mentioned tendencies are illustrated on the diagrams with results, averaged by QD. These diagrams contain pattern results for many other hard drives as well.

If we average HDD results by all six patterns (reading, writing, and copying large and small files),

500 GB models from Hitachi are generally out of reach in this class of tasks so far, Maxtor hard drives fare somewhere in the middle, Seagate products are outsiders here.

Maxtor hard drives demonstrate the worst defragmentation results, Seagate models perform well here.

But the situation with Maxtor hard drives is generally favorable in the pattern of streaming read/write in large or small blocks (typical of systems for mining, storing, and broadcasting multimedia data in near-line data storage systems and servers, as well as PC or workstation operations when editing video/audio data), even though DM11 has lost some performance with small blocks relative to DM10. Seagate hard drives have always demonstrated mediocre results in this test, and the 16 MB buffer in the ST3500641AS does not save the day.