SATA 6.0 vs. SATA 3.0

[DarrellS]

I bought a SATA 6.0 drive two days ago because I needed to move a whole lot of files very quickly. I bought a 6.0 controller card a few months back and my brother just built a new computer with SATA 6.0 on the MB.

I bought the drive at Fry's for $69.99. It is a Seagate ST31000524AS. I thought it was a great deal until I got home and hooked the new drive to my brothers PC. I was very disappointed when the download speeds using Teracopy were no faster than all my SATA 3.0 drives.

I downloaded a benchmark program called HD Tune Pro and ran tests on all my drives and here are the results.

HARD DRIVE...............MINIMUM ....MAXIMUM ...AVERAGE..ACCESS TIME..BURST RATE .*.CPU

C:\ ST316081............43.4 MB/s *108.9 MB/s **84.6 MB/s **17.5 ms **106.4 MB/s **1.8%
D:\ WD1002FAEX-00Z3A....61.4 MB/s *136.7 MB/s *105.7 MB/s **12.3 ms **187.2 MB/s **1.4%
E:\ WD1001FALS-00E8B....55.5 MB/s *111.2 MB/s **91.0 MB/s **12.0 ms **182.7 MB/s **1.7%
F:\ ST31000333AS........57.5 MB/s *120.4 MB/s **95.7 MB/s **15.0 ms **139.8 MB/s **1.4%
G:\ STM31000340AS.......43.3 MB/s *111.4 MB/s **89.8 MB/s **12.7 ms **123.7 MB/s **1.2%
H:\ WD1001FALS-00J78....52.8 MB/s *107.3 MB/s **86.6 MB/s **12.2 ms **179.6 MB/s **2.3%

J:\ ST31000524AS (6.0)..64.2 MB/s *132.3 MB/s *102.7 MB/s **13.6 ms **135.6 MB/s **2.1%
WESTERN DIGITAL ........56.6 MB/s *118.4 MB/s **94.4 MB/s **12.2 ms **183.2 MB/s **1.8%
SEAGATE ................48.1 MB/s *113.6 MB/s **90.0 MB/s **15.1 ms **123.3 MB/s **1.5%

[edDV]

SATA 6 vs SATA 3 refers to the interface. The spinning disk components are no faster. In fact, there is no real difference in sustained speed between ATA 133, SATA 150 or SATA 300 until you get into Raptor class or SSD flash drives..

The higher speed is only achieved when pulling data from cache RAM. In server applications a signifinant amount of disk requests are repetitive. Repetitive requests can be pulled from the cache RAM at the higher speed. There is no advantage for sustained reads or writes.

In your list of drives, only the four WD drives exceed SATA 150 for short bursts. All are less than 150 MB/s for sustained.

[lordsmurf]

If you want increased I/O, look at a SAS solution: SCSI over SATA interface.
But that's designed for a server environment.
Of course, if you need high speed, you need a server and not a workstation.

Teracopy is also a slower copier, as far as I'm concerned. I'd never suggest it.
Download Ycopy instead.

[DarrellS]

If you want increased I/O, look at a SAS solution: SCSI over SATA interface.
But that's designed for a server environment.
Of course, if you need high speed, you need a server and not a workstation.

Teracopy is also a slower copier, as far as I'm concerned. I'd never suggest it.
Download Ycopy instead.

I was going to mention that I never saw the kinds of speeds that HD Tune Pro saw with Teracopy. I'll give Ycopy a try.

I guess I'll return the drive and get a drive with 64MB buffer. My friend gets 80 to 120 MB/s with his WD Caviar Black 1.5 TB 64MB drive. I was looking for a 64 MB cache drive when I bought this drive but all they had was a 2TB drive and it was more than I had to pay. They had a Seagate 1TB 7200rpm SATA III drive with 64MB buffer for $89.99 but it was sold out. Maybe they'll have something for Memorial Day. I've got 12 days to return it.

[edDV]

If you want increased I/O, look at a SAS solution: SCSI over SATA interface.
But that's designed for a server environment.
Of course, if you need high speed, you need a server and not a workstation.

Teracopy is also a slower copier, as far as I'm concerned. I'd never suggest it.
Download Ycopy instead.

I was going to mention that I never saw the kinds of speeds that HD Tune Pro saw with Teracopy. I'll give Ycopy a try.

I guess I'll return the drive and get a drive with 64MB buffer. My friend gets 80 to 120 MB/s with his WD Caviar Black 1.5 TB 64MB drive. I was looking for a 64 MB cache drive when I bought this drive but all they had was a 2TB drive and it was more than I had to pay. They had a Seagate 1TB 7200rpm SATA III drive with 64MB buffer for $89.99 but it was sold out. Maybe they'll have something for Memorial Day. I've got 12 days to return it.

But a larger cache buffer won't by itself improve sustained transfer speed.

Your new drive is testing 132 MB/s at the fast end and 64 MB/s at the slow end which is good. If you partition the drive and capture to the fast end, you could get sustaineed > 100 MB/s for that partition.

ST31000524AS (6.0)..64.2 MB/s *132.3 MB/s *102.7 MB/s

Your Westen Digital D: drive tests slightly faster at the fast end.

WD1002FAEX-00Z3A....61.4 MB/s *136.7 MB/s *105.7 MB/s

[DarrellS]

D:\ has to be a 64MB buffer drive. I uninstalled Teracopy and installed Ycopy but after seeing that it wasn't integrated in Explorer, I uninstalled Ycopy and reinstalled Teracopy and moved a large folder of movies from D:\ to F:\ and it was running at a constant 98 to 114MB/s with bursts up to 145MB/s.

Taking a closer look at HD Tune Pro, it says that the WD1002FAEX-00Z3A is a SATA III drive. It doesn't list the buffer. I can't find any information on this drive through Google. I don't recall buying another SATA III drive but maybe I did without noticing. Guess I'll have to remove it to find out what it is. If it is a SATA III then I'll have to connect it to the SATA III controller and see if the speeds increase. If so, I have my eye on another WD drive at a local PC parts store. It's a WD1002FAEX without any following numbers for $89.00. It has a 64MB buffer.

[edDV]

D:\ has to be a 64MB buffer drive. I uninstalled Teracopy and installed Ycopy but after seeing that it wasn't integrated in Explorer, I uninstalled Ycopy and reinstalled Teracopy and moved a large folder of movies from D:\ to F:\ and it was running at a constant 98 to 114MB/s with bursts up to 145MB/s.

Taking a closer look at HD Tune Pro, it says that the WD1002FAEX-00Z3A is a SATA III drive. It doesn't list the buffer. I can't find any information on this drive through Google. I don't recall buying another SATA III drive but maybe I did without noticing. Guess I'll have to remove it to find out what it is. If it is a SATA III then I'll have to connect it to the SATA III controller and see if the speeds increase. If so, I have my eye on another WD drive at a local PC parts store. It's a WD1002FAEX without any following numbers for $89.00. It has a 64MB buffer.

The disk buffer doesn't get used during capture or copy. The capture app will request system RAM for any capture frame buffering. Bus mastering allows the app exclusive use of assigned RAM for capture frame buffering.

Even if your WD drive is on a SATA 1 (1.5 Gbps/187.5 MB/s) controller card, it would still be fast enough for those disk speeds. SATA 3 (3 Gb/s) is more than fast enough.

[DarrellS]

I ran a test with the WD1002FAEX-00Z3A connected to the SIIG SATA III card and it was about the same as the onboard SATA II controller.

HARD DRIVE.........................MINIMUM ...MAXIMUM ...AVERAGE..ACCESS TIME..BURST RATE .*CPU
ONBOARD SATA -- WD1002FAEX-00Z3A....61.4 MB/s *136.7 MB/s *105.7 MB/s *12.3 ms *187.2 MB/s *1.4%
SIIG SATA III - WD1002FAEX-00Z3A....61.4 MB/s *133.4 MB/s *105.3 MB/s *12.6 ms *143.6 MB/s *1.9%

I ran both SATA III drives on my brother's PC with onboard SATA III controller and here are the results...

HARD DRIVE...........MINIMUM ....MAXIMUM ...AVERAGE..ACCESS TIME..BURST RATE .*.CPU
WD1002FAEX-00Z3A....61.4 MB/s *136.7 MB/s *105.6 MB/s **12.5 ms **237.6 MB/s **0.6%
ST31000524AS (6.0)..62.4 MB/s *132.4 MB/s *102.4 MB/s **13.6 ms **295.4 MB/s **0.5%

The WD looks like a slightly better drive than the Seagate so I'll probably take the Seagate back and go buy the WD.

EDIT: Then again, the Seagate performs pretty well with 32MB buffer compared to the WD with 64MB buffer and is $20 cheaper. Buying hard drives is pretty confusing.