Lab Tests: Dual PCI Ultra-Wide SCSI Controller Raid By Mike Breeden Published: February 1998
Intro | Cards Tested  | ATTO Benchmark | FWB Benchtest  | Time Drive | MacBench | Summary
Part 2 - Dual Card/Dual Drive Raid Tests.
Time Drive v1.3 Results with Dual Card/Dual Drive Raid 0 Array
During my discussions with various Raid VARs, TimeDrive was often mentioned as a benchmark. After using this benchmark for some time now I must say it is my least favorite, and is extremely cache state sensitive. To minimize this effect, a disk cache of 512k was used (vs 4MB for the single card/single drive tests) and the Mac was rebooted before every test run (all tests not just TimeDrive). In general I saw so many identical Read/Write scores that I'm not sure this is the best test to differentiate the cards/drivers. Only the average scores varied in most cases. As noted below, two cards (the Adaptec and Initio Miles) recorded radically higher write scores in the initial run, but repeating the test produced a much lower score (identical to the other cards). In other cards with a low initial score, two repeating the tests would usually result in a much higher score. With this 512k (default) file size, there was basically no variation in the test scores to speak of for Read/Write performance, and only average scores showed any difference. If I was not so soured on TimeDrive, I'd go back and run tests with larger file sizes, but I do not have time to do that now. Also note that Time Drive apparently has a 2GB volume size limit - as although the Raid volume was 4.2GB, the report showed a 2GB volume size. Time Drive v1.3 Results - Dual Card/Dual Drive Raid Array All rates are in KiloBytes/Second. Red = Best Score,   Blue = Worst Score. Card Driver Read Write Typical Adaptec 2940 Bios 3.0 Anubis Raid 31457 31457 3921 Adaptec 2940 Bios 2.5 Anubis Raid 31457 15728 3981 Adaptec 2940 Bios 3.0 ATTO Raid 1.1 31457 15728 3328 Adaptec 2940 Bios 2.5 ATTO Raid 1.1 31457 31457 3803 Adaptec 2940 Bios 3.0 SoftRaid 2 31457 15728 3434 Adaptec 2940 Bios 3.0 Remus Lite 1.4 31457 15728 3169 Adaptec 2940 Bios 2.5 Remus Lite 1.4 31457 15728 2949 Adaptec 2940 Bios 3.0 RTK 2.06 31457 15720 3520 ATTO Anubis Raid 31457 15728 4257 ATTO ATTO Raid 1.1 31457 15728 3459 ATTO SoftRaid 2 31457 15728 3999 ATTO Remus Lite 1.4 31427 15728 3409 ATTO RTK 2.06 31457 15728 3538 Initio Miles Anubis Raid 31457 31457 3589 Initio Miles ATTO Raid 1.1 31457 31457 3430 Initio Miles SoftRaid 2 31457 15728 3827 Initio Miles Remus Lite 1.4 31457 15728 3067 Initio Miles RTK 2.06 31457 15728 3399 Jackhammer Anubis Raid 31457 15728 3913 Jackhammer ATTO Raid 1.1 31457 15728 4128 Jackhammer SoftRaid 2 31457 15728 3907 Jackhammer Remus Lite 1.4 31457 15728 3338 Jackhammer RTK 2.06 31457 15728 4019 Stock SCSI IBM AV 7200rpm Dr. FWB 6291 6291 698 Note: I don't give this test a lot of weight based on the variations I saw. I include it here for reference only. View  Single Card/Drive Scores for this Test (Note: Cache size was 4MB for the single drive tests, vs. 512K for the Raid tests)
I've saved the most popular disk test for last, since MacBench 4.0 would recognize the PCI SCSI only when running the Conley SoftRaid 2.0 or Remus Lite software (I've yet to test Anubis and ATTO Raid though). It did not recognize the Raid ToolKit array. The scores for arrays it did recognize are shown on the next page.
Index of Dual Card/Dual Drive SCSI Raid Comparison Intro | Cards Tested  | ATTO Benchmark | FWB Benchtest  | Time Drive | MacBench = Results Summary =  |   Single Card/Drive Scores for this Test - or - Back to WWW.XLR8YOURMAC.COM
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