With the announcement that Intel's newest chipset, the i82430TX, would support the latest Ultra DMA/33 protocol the question rose as to how much faster Ultra DMA/33 drives are than normal EIDE HDDs and how close the performance of these 33MB/S terrors comes to SCSI performance which can reach burst throughput rates of 40MB/S!

I went out and purchased a Quantum Fireball ST 3.2GB Ultra DMA/33 hard drive to compare to my Western Digital Caviar EIDE HDD, and my Quantum Atlas II UW SCSI-3 HDD. I realized early on that synthetic benchmarks (such as Winbench) wouldn't give me an accurate comparison between the 3 HDDs. According to the Winbench disk benchmarks, my Quantum Atlas II (UltraWide SCSI-3) is 50% slower than my WD Caviar...and that simply isn't right. So I devised a few real world move tests to compare the hard drives. First lets take a look at the three different hard drives used in this test.

Before testing this drive I had never really jumped on the SCSI bandwagon, I saw no need to dump Western Digital's Caviar line in favor of a more expensive SCSI drive...however my opinions completely changed after testing this drive. All the Winstone Benchmarks indicated a small increase in performance, however my real world performance sky-rocketed, especially under Windows NT. Heavy disk operations began to really fly, not to mention the smoothness of the playback I received when playing video files off the Atlas. However, that's not where the strong points of the Atlas come into effect. Sure the 7200rpm spin rate, and 7.5ms access time speed up your normal everyday computer experience, however its in multitasking environments where the advantages of an UltraWide SCSI-3 interface really come into play. Normally, when multitasking with an EIDE hard drive, you notice a significant performance hit, however when multitasking with a SCSI drive...the hit isn't nearly as noticeable. Another obvious advantage of a SCSI interface, in this case an UltraWide SCSI-3 Interface, is the ability to daisy chain a total of 15 internal/external peripherals.

Before rushing out to pick up one of these drives, I suggest looking at the price tag. Before purchasing any SCSI drive, be prepared to pay at least $700 for a decent size/quality model, whereas with an EIDE drive you can get about 5GB for less than $400 a 5GB SCSI will be way up there in price. You must also consider the $300 extra you'll need for a good SCSI Controller, unless you're one of the lucky few to have SCSI support built on your motherboard. The only other downside to going with this drive over an EIDE or UltraDMA drive is well...the heat. The Quantum Atlas II has a 7200rpm spin rate, and generates more heat than my Pentium II at 300MHz! I highly recommend going with a hard drive fan if you're going to be using this particular drive, or any 7200rpm+ HDD.

So you want SCSI performance...without having to sell the rest of your computer to afford the drive, right? Here's the answer to your prayers, the Quantum Fireball ST. All you need to get this baby going is a motherboard (or controller card) with UltraDMA support and an open bay in your case. I was skeptical at first as to how much of an improvement I would see when using the Quantum Fireball ST, or any UltraDMA HDD, over my good 'ole Western Digital Caviar. I expected, at most a 10% improvement, however I was in for a huge surprise. In some cases, the Quantum Fireball ST transferred files twice as fast as my "speedy" Caviar! Although it still didn't reach the performance of my Atlas II, I was impressed at the performance I could squeeze out of a $300 hard drive. And unlike my red-hot SCSI drive, the Fireball ST ran whisper quiet, cool, and flawlessly while I conducted my tests. If you have an UltraDMA compatible motherboard (or controller card) and want an excellent performing hard drive for an excellent price, don't hesitate to get your hands on one of the Quantum Fireball ST's.

There are only two downsides to going with the Fireball ST over a more expensive SCSI drive. First of all, the CPU utilization of the Quantum Fireball ST, although much lower than normal EIDE HDDs, still cannot match the nearly non-existent CPU utilization of SCSI drives. This is simply due to limitations of the technology, however that does strongly effect performance in server situations. Secondly, the 10ms access time (a downside caused by the 5400rpm spin rate vs the 7200rpm spin rate of the SCSI drive) can slow you down considerably, especially if you haven't defragged your drive in a while. I will grant the Fireball ST credit though, the access time is much lower than most other EIDE HDDs, however in my opinion its still too slow to compete head to head with any of the high end SCSI drives.

Many people have often asked me why I use a Western Digital HDD in most of my tests as opposed to a much faster SCSI drive. Well, I'm here to answer that question with one simple answer, Western Digital Hard Drives are not only fast, and reliable, they are also very well supported and almost never cause any problems. Ever since my 386 days, I've used Western Digital drives, and ever since then I've loved them. They aren't the worlds fastest hard drives, but they are extremely reliable. For the price, they can't be beat, you get superb quality, fast performance, and a guarantee you just can't compete with.

A few problems exist with the WD Caviar series that I just must mention. Regardless of what you may hear about the average seek times of the Caviar series, according to Western Digital the average seek time of the Caviar series is sub 12ms, not 10ms, 11ms, or anything else...just sub 12ms. Let that mean whatever you want it to, but I'm just stating the facts. Due to its 5200rpm spin rate, it is a tad bit slower than other drives in its class, however the Caviar series makes up for it in quality and reliability.

When I approached comparing the hard drives, I realized early on that synthetic benchmarking just wouldn't work. So I devised a few real world copy/move tests to really give these hard drives a fair chance against each other. I simulated an installation of Windows 95 Service Release 2 (the copying part) by transferring a collection of files totaling 79.4MB, 81,305.6KB, or 8,325,6934.4 Bytes (a megabyte in this case is equal to 2¹⁰ kilobytes or 1024KB). I tested each hard drive's ability to transfer files from one partition to another, simulating simultaneous read/writes, as well as the ability to transfer from one hard drive to another.

Processor(s):	AMD K6-PR2/200 ALR
BIOS Revision:	AOpen AX5T
RAM:	2 - 32MB Advanced Megatrends SDRAM
Hard Drive(s):	Quantum Atlas II XP34550 Quantum Fireball ST 3.2A Western Digital Caviar AC21600H
Busmaster EIDE Drivers:	Intel v3.01
OS:	Windows 95 Service Release 2
Cooling Configuration:	Enlight 7230 Mid-Tower ATX Case 2 - Secondary Brushless Case Fans

Test	Score (lower is better)
Move Test File from Partition 1 to Partition 2:	19.85s
Move Test File from Partition 2 to Partition 1:	24.96s
Move Test File from Atlas-II to EIDE Test Drive:	33.85s
Move Test File from EIDE Test Drive to Atlas-II:	24.50s

Test	Score (lower is better)
Move Test File from Partition 1 to Partition 2:	30.08s
Move Test File from Partition 2 to Partition 1:	31.25s
Move Test File from Fireball ST to EIDE Test Drive:	34.98s
Move Test File from EIDE Test Drive to Fireball ST:	24.55s

Test	Score (lower is better)
Move Test File from Partition 1 to Partition 2:	59.07s
Move Test File from Partition 2 to Partition 1:	60.32s

As you can tell by the above scores, the Quantum Atlas II does come out on top, however the Fireball ST is close behind. For the price, the Fireball ST is your best option, provided you have a motherboard (or controller card) that supports UltraDMA hard drives. Then again, if you are willing to spend a few hundred more, go ahead and get the Atlas-II, that is if you will benefit from the increased performance and decreased CPU utilization. Don't simply buy a SCSI drive for the sake of buying a SCSI drive, the Quantum Fireball ST is just as good for normal use, and more than enough for the average joe.

MRM's Performance

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