HD Tach result

[nick]

Just run HD Tach on my new laptop drive (Hitachi 7K60 - 7200rpm), with
the following result:

Burst speed: 86.5 MB/s
Random access: 15.4ms
CPU utilization: 4% (+/- 2%)
Average read: 37.5 MB/s

The drive is formatted as NTFS.

Questions:
1. Is the above result normal for 7200rpm drive? Is it too slow?
2. Anyone know of a good site to compare benchmarking results?
3. Any recommendation for a better drive benchmarking software around
that has a comprehensive database online for results comparison?

Cheers

 

[Mike Redrobe]

Just run HD Tach on my new laptop drive (Hitachi 7K60 - 7200rpm), with
the following result:

Burst speed: 86.5 MB/s
Random access: 15.4ms
CPU utilization: 4% (+/- 2%)
Average read: 37.5 MB/s

The drive is formatted as NTFS.

Questions:
1. Is the above result normal for 7200rpm drive? Is it too slow?
2. Anyone know of a good site to compare benchmarking results?

HDTach itself has a small database attached.

3. Any recommendation for a better drive benchmarking software around
that has a comprehensive database online for results comparison?

http://www.storagereview.com/comparison.html

 

[Peter]

Just run HD Tach on my new laptop drive (Hitachi 7K60 - 7200rpm), with

the following result:

Burst speed: 86.5 MB/s
Random access: 15.4ms
CPU utilization: 4% (+/- 2%)
Average read: 37.5 MB/s

The drive is formatted as NTFS.

Questions:
1. Is the above result normal for 7200rpm drive? Is it too slow?
2. Anyone know of a good site to compare benchmarking results?
3. Any recommendation for a better drive benchmarking software around
that has a comprehensive database online for results comparison?

Benchmarking for what applications? Streaming or random access?

 

[Bob Willard]

Just run HD Tach on my new laptop drive (Hitachi 7K60 - 7200rpm), with
the following result:

Burst speed: 86.5 MB/s
Random access: 15.4ms
CPU utilization: 4% (+/- 2%)
Average read: 37.5 MB/s

The drive is formatted as NTFS.

Questions:
1. Is the above result normal for 7200rpm drive? Is it too slow?
2. Anyone know of a good site to compare benchmarking results?
3. Any recommendation for a better drive benchmarking software around
that has a comprehensive database online for results comparison?

Cheers

To see if that is normal for *your* HD, go to that HD vendor's website
and look for the specs for that specific HD. If that vendor does not
post real specs, look for that HD on www.StorageReview.com. Remember
that average access time is the sum of average seek time plus average
rotational latency; if you find seek time spec'ed, add the time for
1/2 a rev. (4.17 mS at 7200 RPM). Also, most HD vendors don't spec
average read rate, so you should compare the vendor's max read rate
with the max. shown on HDtach's graph.

HDtach is the only HD benchmarking tool that I really trust. HDtune seems
to give similar results in a couple of cases, but I've not used it much.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Just run HD Tach on my new laptop drive (Hitachi 7K60 - 7200rpm), with
the following result:

Burst speed: 86.5 MB/s
Random access: 15.4ms
CPU utilization: 4% (+/- 2%)
Average read: 37.5 MB/s

The drive is formatted as NTFS.

Questions:
1. Is the above result normal for 7200rpm drive? Is it too slow?
2. Anyone know of a good site to compare benchmarking results?
3. Any recommendation for a better drive benchmarking software around
that has a comprehensive database online for results comparison?

Looks ok IMO.

Arno

 

[nick]

To see if that is normal for *your* HD, go to that HD vendor's website
and look for the specs for that specific HD. If that vendor does not
post real specs, look for that HD on www.StorageReview.com. Remember
that average access time is the sum of average seek time plus average
rotational latency; if you find seek time spec'ed, add the time for
1/2 a rev. (4.17 mS at 7200 RPM). Also, most HD vendors don't spec
average read rate, so you should compare the vendor's max read rate
with the max. shown on HDtach's graph.

HDtach is the only HD benchmarking tool that I really trust. HDtune seems
to give similar results in a couple of cases, but I've not used it much.

From storagereview.com's database the *slowest*:

"Average random access time":14.3ms, mine: 15.4ms
"Maximum transfer rate (read)": 57.4mb/s, mine: ~47mb/s
"Minimum transfer rate (read)": 32.9mb/s, mine: ~24mb/s

They don't have average read to compare with.

Something's got to be wrong, no?

 

[Rod Speed]

"Average random access time":14.3ms, mine: 15.4ms
"Maximum transfer rate (read)": 57.4mb/s, mine: ~47mb/s
"Minimum transfer rate (read)": 32.9mb/s, mine: ~24mb/s

They don't have average read to compare with.

Something's got to be wrong, no?

Nope, those averages arent laptop drives.

 

[nick]

Nope, those averages arent laptop drives.

Problem is those are not "averages". Those are the slowest cases in
their tests. Are you saying laptop drives usually perform worse than
the slowest of desktop drives?

 

[Rod Speed]

Problem is those are not "averages".
Those are the slowest cases in their tests.

Whoops, my brain fart there.

Are you saying laptop drives usually perform
worse than the slowest of desktop drives?

Yes, essentially because the sectors per track
are much lower and thats an important factor
in the performance with the transfer rates.