Performance in Intel IOMeter

Sequential Read & Write Patterns

IOMeter is sending a stream of read and write requests with a request queue depth of 4. The size of the requested data block is changed each minute, so that we could see the dependence of the drive’s sequential read/write speed on the size of the data block. This test is indicative of the highest speed the drive can achieve.

The numeric data can be viewed in tables (see the links below). We will be discussing graphs and diagrams.

IOMeter: Sequential Read results

The 200GB Seagate 7200.2 delivers the highest top speed in this test – almost 65MBps! The 160GB model from the same series is somewhat slower and comparable to the two other modern HDDs included into the review. You can see that Seagate’s HDDs reach their top speeds faster (on 8KB data chunks) than their opponents from Fujitsu and Hitachi (on 16KB).

The performance growth due to the twofold increase in recording density can be observed easily: the speed has grown by a third.

You can also note that the 7200.2 series drives from Seagate are much faster than their opponents with small data chunks.

There is one problem in the firmware of the 160GB Seagate as its performance plummets down on 4KB data chunks. This is not going to be conspicuous in real-life applications, but anyway.

IOMeter: Sequential Write results

It’s different at writing. The Fujitsu MHW2 BJ delivers the highest top speed and is followed by the new drives from Seagate that show similar results. They are ahead of the Seagate 7200.1 model but not as far ahead as at reading. The Hitachi 7K200 has poor results in this test. Perhaps the developer will solve this problem in the future revisions of the model.

Two things can be noted about the behavior of Seagate’s 7200.2 drives. Like at reading, both drives effectively unite small requests into large ones, and the 160GB model again has problems with 4KB data chunks.