My review of Western Digital 320GB RE3 and 2 in raid0 :)

clocka

clocka

clocka

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Front:

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Back:

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Test Settings:

Drives is installed in AHCI Sata Mode in bios and correct drivers used at f6 install.
Drives have no extra partitions, just a single drive
hd tach - long bench 32mb is used for tests
hdtune - 128kb blocks and 100% accuracy are options used.
All raid tests had write back cache enabled in intel matrix manager.
Raided drives are using 128kb blocks

Spec of computer tested on:

Nvidia 8400GS
Q6700 @ 3.44ghz (430*8)
4GB OCZ ReaperX PC6400 @ 1032 mhz 5-5-5-12
Abit IP35-Pro
ICH9R AHCI Sata Intel

Results:

Idle temp - 34c according to hd tune pro 3.00, max - 35c, as a comparison my wd 7500aaks was 38c
XP install time (including entering serial, name etc, from copying files to memory to booting to windows desktop - approx 10mins
PC Mark 05 1.2.0 Advanced hdd test - 7700 Points

HD Tach in XP:

WD 320GB RE3:
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In comparison my 750GB WD 7500AAKS:
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HD Tune 3.00 in XP:

WD 320GB RE3:
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In comparison my 750GB WD 7500AAKS:
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File benchmark:

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Info:

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PC Mark 05 Pro 1.2.0:

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Extracting 700mb .avi from 50*15mb rars - 7 secs












RAID0 Tests:




VISTA x64 SP1 Ultimate Tests:

adding 4.36gb .iso to 50mb rars, old style volume names, recovery records, store - 1m33s
extracting 4.36gb .iso from 50mb rars - 42s

HD Tune 3.00 Pro:

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PC Mark Vantage 1.00 + Hotfix HDD Test - 6481 Score

XP Pro SP3 Tests:

adding 4.36gb .iso to 50mb rars, old style volume names, recovery records, store - 1m34s

extracting 4.36gb .iso from 50mb rars - 41s
 
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CONTINUED....


Extracting 700mb .avi from 50*15mb rars - 3-4 secs

HD Tune 3.00 Pro:

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PC Mark 05 Pro 1.2.0:

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ATTO 2.34:

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HD Tach 3.0.4.0:

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Percentage increase in raid0 over single drive:

HD Tach 3.0.4.0: 176.3mb/s vs 91.8mb/s = 92.4% faster in raid0
HD Tune 3.00 Pro: 166.1mb/s vs 86.8mb/s = 91.36% faster in raid0




a lot of people might complain saying Samsung F1 320GB gets 95mb/s vs 91.8mb/s in hdtach but remember the seek time on these is around 11.6-12.2ms, samsung f1 is 13.7-14.4ms.

5yr warranty on these too.

Hope this review helps you guys, i know i have missed some comparisons like extracting 700mb.avi on raid and not extracting 4.4gb .iso on non-raided drives and things like that but i did this for you for free, aint getting paid:P

Hopefully someone can do the same tests i did but with Samsung F1 320GB's then we can have a proper comparison of them.
 
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Awesome stuff. It's weird the way the access time drops slightly when in RAID. Also whats going on with that burst rate! It's much higher in RAID.

WD really must have done a bit of tweaking on these drives for RAID use.
 
yeah, these RE3 drives have dual processors inside which i think is why the raid is like 92% faster, normal drives are around 70% ish faster in raid0.
 
Thanks for the results fella. I've just placed an order for 3 of the 250Gb models :)

If I can just be allowed to borrow a pic from another site, you can see the 250Gb model scales exactly the same in RAID0 using the same stripe size. Naturally the results don't tail off as much with it being short stroked.

re3RAIDarray.jpg
 
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Well my 3* RE3 drives have arrived. I've benchmarked mine in RAID 0

They replaced 2* 74gig Raptor drives which I've had for 4 years now. They still work great, but they're getting a little small and are quite noisey.

My PC spec is Q6600 @ 3.5Gig, 4Gb RAM DDR933 @ 12-4-5-4, MSI P35 Neo2-FR with Intel ICH9R, Vista x64.

Firstup with the Raptors. I was actually quite surprised how well these still did for such old drives with small cache. The random access time could be quicker though for a 10k RPM drive.



And now the 3* 250Gb WD RE3 Drives in RAID0. 128k Stripe size, one single partition.


Quite a bit faster! I'm pleased with the speed increase for a mere £130. I can still sell my old drives for a few quid and these RE3 drives are quieter than the Raptors.
 
Iraklis F.C. said:
access time is 7.9 with the raptors , how are you pleased if the raptors have 4 ms advantage which is quite a lot
Click to expand...

Because that is their single advantage, and it's really hard to justify their price for such a small advantage in that area, when for half the price I've built a RAID 0 array that smashes the Raptors and VRaptors in outright transfer rates. :D

I've done a lot of thinking about all this lately and the only thing I was able to conclude was that investing in expensive hard disk setups right now is a bit foolish with the advancements in SSD's every single week. In a year from now a SSD is almost certain to be available that will smash the VRaptors on access time and performance, equal them in capacity and match them on price. Is it worth investing so much on 10k SATA or 15k SAS drives just now knowing this?

I decided it wasn't and just bought a simple but fast array that made use of my onboard raid and was very cheap - £130 odd! :cool:
 
how audible are they?

i'll check on storagereview now anyway

currently using 1x 640gb wd, after ditching my raptor raid (from the noise)

i'm dead happy with the 640, but this is double the performance :D
 
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