Hi,I thought I would chance my arm by posting in both hardware forums in the hope that someone could comment on these results:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho..._id=16305#16305As you will see, I am a bit surprised to find that the Hitachi appears to be faster than the Western Digital drive. The latter is supported by the latest SATA2 drivers for my MoBo (ASRock 939Dual-SATA2).Mike

I can't explain those results. Perhaps the ASRock board has a SATA2 controller that is underperforming when compared to a regular ASUS board. ASRock used to be the value line of ASUS, I don't know if that's still the case.I assume everything else in the test was the same (same OS, same file system, same cpu, same mem, etc.)?RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

I would be more concerned about the Random Access readings... those are pi$$ poor slow and should be 1/2 or less what they are showing (8-12ms MAX)That tool is also a joke and is well known for displaying skewed results which can change with different drivers installed. I use that tool to spot check the CPU use on the storage system ONLY and pretty much ignore the rest of what it displays other than random access which I may look at.Use ATTO Mark

Also remember that EIDE and SATA are only Busses. They are tracks on which race cars (the harddrives) run. Eide 133 can accommodate speeds of up to 133MB/sec. SATA 1 can accommodate speeds of up to 150MB/sec and SATA 2 can accomidate speeds up to 375MB/s (but before we get massively technical, these are approximate).The 2 drives have maximum transfer rates of 80 and 90. In this case, the even the old PATA/EIDE-100 standard would not limit these drive's transfer rates. An IDE and/or a SATA buss interface will not matter until you hit that inteface's bandwidth limit. These are Both very fast drives. Choosing IDE vs SATA is more about: "What do you have left to plug it into." However, chose SATA if you have a choice. There are other benefits. For instance, I have 3 Seagates in a raid 0. HD tune shows transfer rates of ~ 300MB/s. I really need the SATA II's bandwidth capability, but most other users will not. Boot and flight loads are Much quicker. I can barely stand to use my old machine anymore. I also have a single Seagage -11 that shows transfer rates of 110MB/s. That's about the modern standard these days. 80-90 is Not a bit bad either. I expect we're going to be talking about latency shortly. That's important too.

Hi Rhett,"I can't explain those results. Perhaps the ASRock board has a SATA2 controller that isunderperforming when compared to a regular ASUS board. ASRockused to be the value line of ASUS, I don't know if that'sstill the case.I assume everything else in the test was the same (same OS,same file system, same cpu, same mem, etc.)?"Yes, everything remained the same. I've had this board for 18 months now and it has proven to be very reliable. There was some booting issues at the beginning but these were resolved.I hear what you are saying as regards it being a "value" board but, in it's day, this was very good value. Anyway outfits like Anandtech seemed to like it:http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2524&p=10So, I think it unlikely that the SATA2 feature would have been overlooked.Regards,Mike

Hi Sam,Thanks for your input.So, are you saying I should stop fretting and accept things as they are?These drives replaced WD Caviar SE16 250GB (WD2500KS) SATAII + Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 ATA133 UDMA-6 (320 GB) and, I have to say that I am not noticing any significant differences in 'real world' performance between my new drives and those they replaced. Unfortunately, I didn't keep any of the benchies done on the original drives but I have the feeling that they were probably similar.Regards,Mike

Hi Nick,I confess I hoped you would join in ;)"I would be more concerned about the Random Access readings...those are pi$$ poor slow and should be 1/2 or less what theyare showing (8-12ms MAX)That tool is also a joke and is well known for displayingskewed results which can change with different driversinstalled. I use that tool to spot check the CPU use on thestorage system ONLY and pretty much ignore the rest of what itdisplays other than random access which I may look at.Use ATTO Mark"Yes, the Random Access times concerned me as well. What is difficult to understand is that BOTH drives are showing higher figures than expected, viz:WDC WD5000AAKS-65YGA (500GB) SATA2 = 8.9ms (Avg)Hitachi Deskstar P7K500 (Hitachi HDP725050GLA(500GB)) ATA-133 = ? (I couldn't even find a reference on Hitachi's site!).Here is the data from ATTO Disk Benchmark (ver. 2.34):Western Digital SATA2http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/187995.jpgHitachi Deskstar ATA-133http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/187996.jpgOne other thing - both drives are reported as being UDMA Mode 6 on the initial screen at boot (same as the drives they replaced - WD Caviar SE16 250GB (WD2500KS) SATAII + Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 ATA133 (320 GB) whereas in the BIOS the WD drive is correctly assigned to SATA2 which is enabled.Regards,Mike

I am very busy and slammed this together fast in about 20 minutes so please excuse the typos

>>Yes, everything remained the same. I've had this board for 18>months now and it has proven to be very reliable. There was>some booting issues at the beginning but these were resolved.>>I hear what you are saying as regards it being a "value" board>but, in it's day, this was very good value. Anyway outfits>like Anandtech seemed to like it:>MikeYes don't get me wrong--I really like ASRock boards--a few years ago when I was building more systems I built several using ASRock's. That's why I said, it used to be the value edition of ASUS, but I wasn't sure if that was still true today in 2008, since I haven't used an ASRock in a while.But yes ASRocks used to be, and probably still are, great performers for the money. After all--it's an ASUS, really!>>So, I think it unlikely that the SATA2 feature would have been>overlooked.>My concern was more with quality-control issues with any value-line of motherboard; as in, if in QC testing, they have a board whose SATA controller wasn't quite performing up to where it should be, they pass the board anyway--who is going to notice? Would they pass it if it were an ASUS Maximus Extreme? Perhaps not :)But if I were going to build a value system, an ASRock board was one of the ones I used to look at first.But I don't think any QC issues with the SATA controller are what you are seeing; probably it is just HDTach. Now I will step back and listen to all of you guys, this is an interesting thread, thanks for bringing it up.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

You can also use SiSoftware Sandra to double check the drive latency. If you are getting similar results, something is not right. if you get different results that make more sense, then HDTach is simply not reading the drives correctly.. happens all the time with that program.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/188014.jpgI am not real fond of Sandra either but as long as you have their latest software the result is better gauged than HDTach

If you are looking for the fastest drive,,, the prince is dead, long live the Kinghttp://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=459Is it faster???lets find out...http://www.wdc.com/en/library/sata/2879-701260.pdfThe Latency + Read = 9.2ms which is actually SLOWER than the SATA150 Raptor which specs out at 7.6-8msNot a wild amount slower, but there is a lag in latency none the lessthe next number you want to look at is the RPM.. both the same however because of the platter size geometry rules state the larger platter at 10K will produce the faster result...OK, so now we have a - and a + which balance things outlast, what is the buffer to disk speed of each...The SATA150 Raptor is 85MB/s (Sustained)The SATA300 VelociRaptor is 120 MB/s (Sustained)therefore we have a new King and it is the VelociRaptorThere are drives that are better suited for enterprise use but for home desktop, you are looking at a 20-30% better than the RaptorX (I have 2 of these jewels) great drive!

I gotta say, reading these technical discussions lately is a lot more interesting and enjoyable than the performance complaints that populated the forums a year ago.And this one is especially convenient as I am now trying to decide what hardrive (or two?) to put in my new system.After reading through this thread, it seems that two raptors and a $300 dollar raid card for my new computer is the fastest option. I'll just skimp a little on the birthday present for the missus. :( Then I came across this Anandtech article on the new Western Digital VelociRaptor.http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3291&p=1Woah! The fastest has just become faster, quieter, and more efficient. Honey, where's the number of that home equity loan? Well, fortunately I finished the article before I called my loan officer. The best page in the article is the one aptly called "Let's get real". We're talking less than a one second difference out of 35 seconds in load times between the VelicoRaptor, Raptor, Seagate 7200.11, and the WD SE16. Gentlemen, what am I mortgaging the house for?So my first question to the computer engineers of the forum is, despite the benchmarks above, are there any significant performance differences between these hardrives when FSX is up and running as the load time differences appear to be insignificant?I have read on this forum that motherboard raid does not offer any performance benefit to FSX. What benefit is provided by a raid system implemented through a quality raid card system?My conclusion from the Anandtech article is that the Seagate or WD SE16 are the best drives to get because they load about as quick as the others, but they run quieter and cooler...and leave more funds for gifts for the missus....or "GEX- The world series"..:-bigangel Then I've also read here to put FSX on one drive and the OS on another drive. But what about all your other addon aircraft, scenery, weather, ASX, FSPassengers, Live Cockpit etc. programs? Do these go on the the OS drive, the FSX drive, or a third drive? And if it is beneficial to RAID, then where do you install this different software? Let the discussions continue. :-beerchug

Drivers/controller and the person setting up the tests with respect to BIOS and controller settings will make a huge difference in what those drives will/will not do in tests.the drives are also new and there is a few firmware issues they are still pounding out.Yep, they be expensive right now.. anything new is but I don

Hi Nick,Wow! You never cease to amaze me! Thanks for the time you are spending on this. I do appreciate my board may not be the greatest, but along with the majority of simmers out there we work with what we can afford and try to get the best that is realistically possible from it. My main concern is that the SATA2 Western Digital drive seems to be under-performing for some reason. Clearly this is important as my sims are all on the D: partition of this drive. Since I can't use O&O safely it would at least help to ensure that the HD read and access times are optimized.I think the performance of the Hitachi ATA-133 is probably acceptable, although I would like to know why the access times are so long. This is not so critical as the drive is used primarily for archiving and backups. However, I do have the Tileproxy cache.service and Photoreal folders on this drive.Anyway, here are a few more images which I think should be self-explanatory:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/188036.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/188032.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/188033.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/188034.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/188035.jpgRegards,Mike

Well, for some reason the system removed my images.. probably because it exceeded to the max thread number. I assume you saw them which demonstrates quite clearly HDTach is completely unreliable.As for what you posted above... the first image makes sense to me and appears normal. That shows the true bandwidth of the driveThe 3 benchmarks you posted after that are quite useless for a non RAID setup. With a single drive what they are displaying is more the 'burst' and not the true sustained speed which is more in line @ spec to 65-80MB/s as the first images showsDrive speed and latency are two different things. I would be concerned with the Random Access times. Try another benchmark tool and see if the result HTDach shows remains high. If so then something is wrong. It is very likely the cheaper Asrock board does not like the firmware of the newer drives. I can not guess at this point however that is a distinct possibility.