Performance
What about the performance of the two 20-GB 5400 RPM drives? We used Xbench 1.1.3 to benchmark each drive separately in the old FireWire case and each separately in the BayDock and together as a striped RAID set up using Mac OS X's 10.3.3 Disk Utility. We also benchmarked our new 120-GB 7200 RPM Seagate internal HDD for comparison. Here are the results:
|
Xbench 1.1.3
|
Old Case
|
WiebeTech Dual BayDock
|
Internal Drive
|
|||
|
.
|
WDC*
|
IBM*
|
WDC
|
IBM
|
Striped
RAID |
Seagate*
|
|
Overall Score
|
38
|
41
|
50
|
54
|
63
|
116
|
|
Sequential Read--Small**
|
11
|
13
|
18
|
18
|
21
|
53
|
|
-- Large**
|
11
|
12
|
17
|
17
|
19
|
52
|
|
Sequential Write--Small
|
3
|
4
|
6
|
10
|
8
|
23
|
|
-- Large
|
20
|
22
|
20
|
28
|
24
|
52
|
|
Random Read--Small
|
1.0
|
0.6
|
0.9
|
0.6
|
1.4
|
1.4
|
|
-- Large
|
11
|
12
|
12
|
12
|
19
|
24
|
|
Random Write--Small
|
0.4
|
0.4
|
0.4
|
0.5
|
0.5
|
0.7
|
|
-- Large
|
12
|
14
|
12
|
15
|
15
|
25
|
*WDC=Western Digital Caviar 20-GB 5AA-40BAA0; IBM= IBM Deskstar 20-GB DTLA-305020; Seagate=Seagate Barracuda 120-GB ST3120026A
**Small=4K blocks; Large=256K blocks in MB/sec
The FireWire bridge in the BayDock is much faster than in the old FireWire case, nearly a third faster according to the aggregate scores and mostly in the sequential actions. Striping the two drives provides a 20+ per cent additional boost overall. But the new Seagate drive is still about twice as fast overall.
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