Lab Tests: Single PCI Ultra-Wide SCSI Controller RAID Tests By Mike Breeden Published: February 1998
Intro | Cards Tested  | ATTO Benchmark | FWB Benchtest  | Time Drive | MacBench | Graphs
Part 3 - Single SCSI Card/Dual Drive Raid Tests.
Time Drive v1.3 Results with One SCSI 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 that I hesitated to even publish them. Also be aware that Time Drive v1.3 will reported that the 4.2GB array was 2GB, which also makes the scores suspect (it may be like many older software and not support volumes of more than 2GB). To minimize the cache state effect seen in the first tests (one card/one drive), a disk cache of 512k (vs 4MB) was used 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 - One SCSI Card/Dual Drive Raid Array All rates are in KiloBytes/Second. (Numbers in parenthesis are dual SCSI card results.) Red = Best Score,   Blue = Worst Score. Card Driver Read Write Typical Adaptec 2940 Bios 3.0 Anubis Raid 31457 (31457) 15728 (31457) 3235 (3921) Adaptec 2940 Bios 2.5 Anubis Raid 31457(31457) 15728 (15728) 3434 (3981) Adaptec 2940 Bios 3.0 ATTO Raid 1.1 31457 (31457) 15728 (15728) 3138 (3328) Adaptec 2940 Bios 2.5 ATTO Raid 1.1 31457 (31457) 15728 (31457) 3573 (3803) Adaptec 2940 Bios 3.0 SoftRaid 2 31457 (31457) 15728 (15728) 3489 (3434) Adaptec 2940 Bios 2.5 SoftRaid 2 31457 (TBD) 15728 (TBD) 3723 (TBD) Adaptec 2940 Bios 3.0 Remus Lite 1.4 31457 (31457) 15728 (15728) 3153 (3169) Adaptec 2940 Bios 2.5 Remus Lite 1.4 31457 (31457) 15728 (15728) 3015 (2949) Adaptec 2940 Bios 3.0 RTK 2.06 31457 (31457) 15728 (15720) 3299 (3520) Adaptec 2940 Bios 2.5 RTK 2.06 31457 (TBD) 15728 (TBD) 3322 (TBD) ATTO Anubis Raid 31457 (31457) 15728 (15728) 3783 (4257) ATTO ATTO Raid 1.1 15728 (31457) 15728 (15728) 3735 (3459) ATTO SoftRaid 2 31457 (31457) 15728 (15728) 4239 (3999) ATTO Remus Lite 1.4 31457 (31427) 15728 (15728) 3358 (3409) ATTO RTK 2.06 31457 (31457) 15728 (15728) 3796 (3538) Initio Miles Anubis Raid 31457 (31457) 15728 (31457) 3712 (3589) Initio Miles ATTO Raid 1.1 31457 (31457) 15728 (31457) 3164 (3430) Initio Miles SoftRaid 2 31457 (31457) 15728 (15728) 3819 (3827) Initio Miles Remus Lite 1.4 31457 (31457) 15728 (15728) 3428 (3067) Initio Miles RTK 2.06 31457 (31457) 15728 (15728) 3701 (3399) Jackhammer Anubis Raid 31457 (31457) 15728 (15728) 3993 (3913) Jackhammer ATTO Raid 1.1 31457 (31457) 15728 (15728) 3483 (4128) Jackhammer SoftRaid 2 31457 (31457) 15728 (15728) 3778 (3907) Jackhammer Remus Lite 1.4 31457 (31457) 15728 (15728) 3331 (3338) Jackhammer RTK 2.06 31457 (31457) 15728 (15728) 4110 (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. Many made no sense and repeating the tests often showed wild jumps in R/W and Avg scores (R/W halved or doubled). 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 One SCSI Card/Dual Drive Raid Comparison Intro | Cards Tested  | ATTO Benchmark | FWB Benchtest  | Time Drive | MacBench Graphs |  Go to Dual SCSI Card Raid Tests |  Go to Single Card/Drive Tests - or - Back to WWW.XLR8YOURMAC.COM
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