Today – decided to test out hard disk set up in a test rig, in order to ascertain how should one structure their files. The setup consists of the following items:
- 3 X 300GB Velociraptors – Striped
- 1 X 120GB F120 Corsair SSD (Boot Disk)
- 5 X 1TB on Drobo S for Redundancy Storage for photos
Test are conducted using X-Bench.
Here are the summary of the results!
From the results, clearly Drobo S is way way way way behind. Which is predictable, as the whole idea for that to exist is to ensure redundancy. And as many would know, when there’s redundancy – performance will be impacted. Hence both, the random and sequential reads, the results is relatively bad. FYI – the connection for the Drobo S is via e-Sata.
On comparison of the Velociraptor and the SSD – clearly, for the Sequential write, Velociraptor that is striped is a clear winner as the writing speed is almost 50% more than the SSD. But i bet you, if the SSD is raid in a similar setup as the Velociraptors, the SSD writes will be faster by many folds!
On the Random space, SSD is a clear winner except for the Uncached Write 256k. Then again – its Random so its good.
Conclusion
By looking at the results…
- SSD should be the boot disk .. Launching apps, writing logs swapping memories are mostly random writes and reads…
- Velociraptor – Stripe … Should be use as the primary storage of the active data. Whereby if you are a photographer, the current project or current catalogs should be there so that the processing is snappy!
- Drobo S – As useless as it is, the setup allows for two disk redundancy, therefore the files should always be backed up to the Drobo S. Unless there’s fire… your files are safe!
ZZZZZ
Tests on three hard disk setup, 3 X Velociraptors Striped, 1 X SSD and 5 X 1TB on Drobo S