Seagate Sets Loose a Faster Cat

ENT, Feb 26, 2001 by Stephen Swoyer

The new 15,000 RPM Cheetah X15 Ultral60 SCSI hard drive from Seagate Technology is the fastest fixed disc drive manufactured today. And depending on the kinds of applications in which it is used, the world-class performance could translate into significant business value.

Heat is always an issue with high performance SCSI drives. Even though the new 15K Cheetah draws about half of a watt less than its 10K forbear, you've still got to make sure it is adequately ventilated. Right off the bat we placed our four 15K Cheetahs into two DataSilo enclosures from StorCase Technology.

StorCase says the DataSilo -- which supports the hot-swapping of drives -- is designed to accommodate the ultra-low profile footprint of the new Cheetah. And it did very nicely. So much so that our test-drives actually ran cool.

We wanted to conduct RAID performance evaluations of the new Cheetah using the eXtremeRAID 2000 Ultral60 RAID host bus adapter (HBA) from Mylex, but we weren't able to obtain a sample controller prior to our review. Instead, we relied on the 39160 Ultra160 SCSI HBA from Adaptec, which we installed in a custom-built Windows 2000 Advanced Server box with a Pentium III 800-MHz processor and 512 MB of RAM each. The StorCase enclosures were connected to our test systems by means of a standard 68-pin very high density-cable interconnect. Each StorCase enclosure was connected to a separate channel on the Adaptec 39160 HBA.

The Windows 2000 system was outfitted with a single 64-bit ANA-62022 100 Mbps server NIC -- also from Adaptec -- and networked via a 100-Mbps Catalyst 2924XL switch from Cisco Systems.

For the sake of comparison, we installed two 36 GB Ultra160 10K Cheetah drives -- internally, this time -- in another 800-MHz Windows 2000 sys tem also outfitted with 512 MB of RAM and an Adaptec 39160 Ultra160 SCSI HBA.

We didn't want to rely on convention al benchmark tests to gauge the performance of the Cheetah drives. We wanted to use tests that reflect their applicability in real-world situations -- such as the copying of a single large image file and the mass reading and copying of numerous small files.

After all, copying large image files deals primarily with sequential or same-sector I/O -- performance segments in which even inexpensive UltraATA 100 IDE hard drives are capable of recording excellent results. The random I/Os required by mass read-and-write operations, however, are access time- and latency-dependent, which means these operations should provide an ideal testing ground for Seagate's new Cheetah.

The Cheetah X15 has an extremely low 3.9 millisecond access time, which in tandem with its native 2 millisecond rotational latency makes for less than 6 millisecond of total latency. Quite promising.

On our old WinBench 99 benchmark program, the 15K Cheetahs registered sustained transfer rates of over 8.3 MBps for random and 42 MBps for sequential I/O. The 10K Cheetahs notched 7.7 MBps and 41.2 MBps, respectively.

But can world-class performance effectively translate into real-world pay off? In terms of same sector or sequential I/O transfers, it seems the new Cheetah doesn't provide much performance boost. We copied a 3 GB image file from one freshly formatted 15K Cheetah drive to another in 2 minutes and 53 seconds. On a pair of freshly formatted 10K Cheetah drives, the total time was 2 minutes and 56 seconds. That makes the 15K about 1 percent faster.

But when it comes to the random reading, copying, or deletion of files, the superior performance of the 15K Cheetah screams for attention. We copied more than 40,000 small files -- which ranged in size from 5 KB to 300 KB, and amounted to 2.7 GB -- from one freshly formatted 15K Cheetah to another in 7 minutes, 24 seconds. We repeated this exercise on two freshly for matted 10K Cheetahs with a total time of 7 minutes, 56 seconds. That's about a 6 percent improvement that will translate into a measurable performance boost for many applications.

It's a pleasure to write about a highly touted new product and report that it not only lives up to but also exceeds our expectations.

Seagate achieved a rare feat with its 15K Cheetah drives: The company engineered the most technologically sophisticated fixed disc drive in the world and it matched all of that technological sophistication with a corresponding pay-off in real-world performance. The faster seek times and lower overall latencies of the 15K Cheetah should allow you to support more users on your servers and lower the response times of some of your most mission critical applications. And with the $500 asking price, low-profile form factors, and somewhat cooler operating temperatures, we think the new 15K Cheetah represents genuine value for the business dollar.

Cheetah X15 Ultra160 SCSI

Seagate Technology LLC, Scotts Valley, Calif.

[405] 936-1234

www.seagate.com

Pricing: $599

Pros/Cons:

3.9 millisecond access time and sub-6 millisecond overall drive latency combine to deliver significantly improved performance

Runs cooler and has about the same noise profile as its predecessor