Maxtor DiamondMax 10: Exploring NCQ & RAID
More RAID Performance (32K Stripe)
 |
|
In seek time, the rotational velocity of the Raptors still overcomes all configurations of the Maxtor drives. The pattern of a pair of Maxtor drives having very similar performance to three drives in RAID 5 performance is maintained. We would have expected additional read heads on a three drive RAID 0 configuration of Maxtor drives to reduce seek times, but this was not the case.
It is very normal to see high CPU utilization for RAID 5 configurations. This is not the case when the Intel ICH7 integrated RAID is paired with the NCQ Maxtor drives though. This combination yields utilization numbers generally in line with the other configurations.
RAID 32K Stripe Summary:
The number of drives seems to be a key factor in RAID performance with pure striping. In RAID 5, the severe write performance penalty should make most users think twice about this configuration. Certain systems where write requirements are minimal and up-time through a drive failure is critical, like a web server, are good candidates.
