EVEREST Disk Benchmark

Many enthusiasts are familiar with the EVEREST benchmark suite by Lavalys, but very few are aware of the Disk Benchmark tool available inside the program. The EVEREST Disk Benchmark performs linear read and write bandwidth tests on each drive, and can be configured to use file chunk sizes up to 1MB (which speeds up testing and minimizes jitter in the waveform). Because of the full sector-by-sector nature of linear testing, Benchmark Reviews endorses this method for testing SSD products, as detailed in our Solid State Drive Benchmark Performance Testing article. However, Hard Disk Drive products suffer a lower average bandwidth as the capacity draws linear read/write speed down into the inner-portion of the disk platter. EVEREST Disk Benchmark does not require a partition to be present for testing, so all of our benchmarks are completed prior to drive formatting.

Although the Seagate Cheetah 15K.7 hard drive is connected to the LSI SAS3081E-R Serial Attached SCSI 3.0 GBps PCI-Express SAS adapter, all other high-performance storage products tested with EVEREST Disk Benchmark are connected to the Intel ICH10R SATA controller resident on the Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P motherboard. Using the 1MB block size, linear read performance of the 600GB Seagate ST3600057SS measured an average 172.1 MBps with a maximum peak of 201.1 MBps. Linear write-to tests were next...

Linear disk benchmarks are superior tools in my opinion, because they scan from the first physical sector to the last. A side affect of many linear write-performance test tools is that the data is erased as it writes to every sector on the drive. Normally this isn't an issue, but it has been shown that partition tables will occasionally play a role in overall SSD performance (HDDs are more mature products and don't suffer this problem). The Seagate Cheetah 15K.7 SAS Hard Drive did well-enough for itself, as shown in the waveform chart below. The Seagate Cheetah 15K.7 SAS hard drive recorded an average linear write-to speed of 138.8 MBps, with a maximum performance of 168.3 MBps.

The chart below shows the average linear read and write bandwidth for a cross-section of other SATA drives attached to the Intel ICH10 Southbridge:

Linear bandwidth certainly benefits the Solid State Drive, since there's very little fluctuation in transfer speed. Hard Disk Drive products decline in performance as the spindle reaches the inner-most sectors on the magnetic platter. I personally consider linear tests to be the single most important comparison of storage drive products, although hard disk drive products decrease performance as they reach the edge of the spindle, SSD products operate at a relatively smooth speed from start to finish.

Drive Hardware

Intel X25-E Extreme SATA-II SLC SSD SSDSA2SH032G1GN
Mtron MOBI 3500 64GB 3.5" SATA SSD MSD-SATA3535-064
OCZ Agility-EX 64GB SATA SLC OCZSSD2-1AGTEX60G (Firmware version 1.31)
OCZ Vertex EX 120GB SATA SLC SSD OCZSSD2-1VTX120G (Firmware version 1.20)
Seagate Cheetah 15K.6 SAS 450GB 15,000 RPM Hard Drive ST3450856SS (16MB Cache Buffer)
Seagate Cheetah 15K.7 SAS 600GB 15,000 RPM Hard Drive ST3600057SS (16MB Cache Buffer)
Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB WD3000HLFS 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive (16MB Cache Buffer)

In the next section, Benchmark Reviews tests sequential performance using the CrystalDiskMark software tool...

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