Benchmarks
For benchmark testing, I used HD Tach 3 and ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.36 on Windows XP Pro SP2, running on an Asus A7N8X Deluxe and AMD Athlon 3000+ Barton, and using two Western Digital Caviar RE WD3200SD (RAID-optimized 320GB, 8MB cache SATA I, 7200RPM) drives. Both the USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 interfaces will be tested. Unfortunately, there was no equipment readily available to test the FireWire 800 connection for this review.
First up: HD Tach 3. In this test, read time and bandwidth will each be tested with USB 2.0 and FireWire 400, from both the partition under RAID 0, and the individual drives under JBOD.
| HDTach 3 | JBOD | RAID 0 | |||||
| Average Read | Random Access | Burst Speed | Average Read | Random Access | Burst Speed | ||
| USB 2.0 | HDD0 | 28.7 MB/s | 13.9 ms | 30.1 MB/s | 28.8 MB/s | 13.7 ms | 29.5 MB/s |
| HDD1 | 28.7 MB/s | 13.7 ms | 30.2 MB/s | ||||
| FireWire 400 | HDD0 | 37.9 MB/s | 13.6 ms | 41.9 MB/s | 39.5 MB/s | 13.3 ms | 42.0 MB/s |
| HDD1 | 37.9 MB/s | 13.5 ms | 42.0 MB/s | ||||
This second round of benchmarks used ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.36, which offers both read and write speeds. This benchmark is done in the same manner as before with the USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 interfaces, both under the RAID 0 and JBOD modes.
| ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.36 | JBOD | RAID 0 | |||
| Average Read | Average Write | Average Read | Average Write | ||
| USB 2.0 | HDD0 | 29 MB/s | 29 MB/s | 29 MB/s | 29 MB/s |
| HDD1 | 29 MB/s | 29 MB/s | |||
| FireWire 400 | HDD0 | 41 MB/s | 40 MB/s | 47 MB/s | 41 MB/s |
| HDD1 | 41 MB/s | 40 MB/s | |||
To determine how accessing both drives at the same time impacts performance with JBOD, here’s how HD Tach 3′s read benchmark turned out. Notice that although the initial burst speed is the same as before, the sustained average read and access time were halved (as expected).
| HDTach 3 | JBOD | |||
| Average Read | Random Access | Burst Speed | ||
| USB 2.0 | HDD0 | 14.7 MB/s | 26.8 ms | 30.0 MB/s |
| HDD1 | 14.4 MB/s | 26.9 ms | 30.8 MB/s | |
| FireWire 400 | HDD0 | 20.5 MB/s | 26.1 ms | 41.9 MB/s |
| HDD1 | 20.9 MB/s | 26.0 ms | 41.8 MB/s | |
Similar to the HD Tach 3 benchmark just above, here’s how the enclosure did with both reading and writing using ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.36:
| ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.36 | JBOD | ||
| Average Read | Average Write | ||
| USB 2.0 | HDD0 | 14 MB/s | 14 MB/s |
| HDD1 | 14 MB/s | 14 MB/s | |
| FireWire 400 | HDD0 | 24 MB/s | 25 MB/s |
| HDD1 | 23 MB/s | 22 MB/s | |
While the USB 2.0 tests sustained an even speed between the two drives; under FireWire 400, the results seemed to be slightly skewed towards HDD0 (the upper drive in the enclosure). On top of that, the read and write speeds under FireWire 400 were much more erratic, compared to the consistent USB 2.0 transfer speed, which deviated little from the average. Looking at the numbers, USB 2.0 maintained a constant 14 MB/s, while FireWire 400 jumped from 14 MB/s all the way up to 41 MB/s and everything in between.
Finally, remember that all of these are synthetic benchmarks which may or may not be accurate, and will probably not reflect real-world performance. Also note that non-Western Digital RE drives may show a slightly lower performance benchmark when compared to Western Digital’s RE hard drives under RAID 0 in this drive enclosure, simply because RE drives are optimized to give a performance boost when used in RAID.
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