Very Computer

Can anyone suggest me what is a better buy, Quantum Fireball 1.08 or
WD 1.2, in terms of performance?
I'm also interested in opinions about linux performance of these drives.
I have only 8M RAM and perform a lot of swapping, so what should be better,
WD's access time of 10ms and RPM 4500, or Quantum's 12ms and 5400?

My controller is an old ISA IDE, will upgrading to VLB EIDE improve much
the performance (especially under linux)?

Thanks in advance

I have the Quantum Fireball 1080 and really like it.  I don't think
you can go wrong with that drive.  It is quiet and very fast.  I don't
know about the WD, but I would say the Fireball is a sure bet.  I'm
using it with NT Workstation 3.51.

HTH,

--------------------------------------------------------------

John Outlan

--------------------------------------------------------------

Quote:>Can anyone suggest me what is a better buy, Quantum Fireball 1.08 or
>WD 1.2, in terms of performance?
>I'm also interested in opinions about linux performance of these drives.
>I have only 8M RAM and perform a lot of swapping, so what should be better,
>WD's access time of 10ms and RPM 4500, or Quantum's 12ms and 5400?

What would be better, truly, is more RAM.  I upgraded from a 386-40 to a
486-3x33, each with 8 megs of RAM, and didn't get much performance gain...
admittedly, the drives weren't EIDE.  

However, the Quantum Fireball is the faster drive.  The rotation speed is
better (which reduces access time: less rotational latency), the areal
density is better (better transfer rate head-to-media, less track-to-track
seeking on continuous reads), and the seek time on the Fireball is said to
be 10.5 ms by actual users, rather than the 12 ms which Quantum reports.

Quote:>My controller is an old ISA IDE, will upgrading to VLB EIDE improve much
>the performance (especially under linux)?

Seek time will still dominate under heavy swapping.  Local bus and EIDE
will help with transfer rate, but...

        Keith
(Ask me tomorrow; I'm getting a new Fireball then.)

--
Disclaimer:  Despite the fact that I disclaim any connections between the
opinions expressed here and any other person, group, or entity which has not
licensed said opinions, my opinions are in fact not connected with any other
person, group, or entity which has not licensed them.

I doubt the WD's 10ms access time will compensate for its lackluster 4500 rpm
spindle speed. The Quantum is a real screamer. I anguised between the
Quantum and a Seagate Declathon (another screamer) for 2 weeks, and finally
bought both. The Quantum beats the Seagate flat, in terms of both access speed
(measured by Norton SI) and data transfer ( measured by Norton SI, PC Bench,
and by copying a huge 20 MB file from a RAM disk to the harddisk). All I can
say is that the Fireball is outstanding value. I finally bought another Fireball
and got rid of my Declathon.

--
Christopher Yo                Systems Specialist, Research & Development

Disclaimer: Opinions/views expressed are mine, not my employer's.

: |> >Can anyone suggest me what is a better buy, Quantum Fireball 1.08 or
: |> >WD 1.2, in terms of performance?

The Fireball has 5400 RPM spindle speed compared to the WD 4200, which
would make it faster.  I can't say much about the rest of the
attributes.  The fireball has 128K of cache compared to WD 64K.  The
fireball also support PIO Mode 4 and DMA 2, which WD don't implement
till their 1.6G drive.

From what I have heard off of this group, buy the Fireball, cheap,
fast and easy.  I did.

If you like, get the ATA FAQ.  A friend gave it to me, I cannot recall
where he got it from.  It is a extremely useful piece of information.

Good Luck,
Darren

--

University of Saskatchewan      |     http://www.cs.usask.ca/~ddb132/
Saskatoon Linux Group           | http://www.cs.usask.ca/~ddb132/slg/
--------------------------------|------------------------------------
        "Common sense is not so common."
                                Voltaire

|> >Can anyone suggest me what is a better buy, Quantum Fireball 1.08 or
|> >WD 1.2, in terms of performance?
|> >I'm also interested in opinions about linux performance of these drives.
|> >I have only 8M RAM and perform a lot of swapping, so what should be better,
|> >WD's access time of 10ms and RPM 4500, or Quantum's 12ms and 5400?
|> What would be better, truly, is more RAM.  I upgraded from a 386-40 to a
|> 486-3x33, each with 8 megs of RAM, and didn't get much performance gain...
|> admittedly, the drives weren't EIDE.  
|>
|> However, the Quantum Fireball is the faster drive.  The rotation speed is
|> better (which reduces access time: less rotational latency), the areal
|> density is better (better transfer rate head-to-media, less track-to-track
|> seeking on continuous reads), and the seek time on the Fireball is said to
|> be 10.5 ms by actual users, rather than the 12 ms which Quantum reports.

I'm interested in getting a gig too as I've recently installed Linux and
appalled at the amount of disk space it's eaten up for such a minimal
system... ^_^;   What I'm interested to know also is what drive has a rep
of being nice and quiet....the Quantum I have now is absolutely disgusting
in the noise department....

Any info greatly appreciated...

Li

I just got the IBM Deskstar-pro DPEA-31080 1 Gig drive at a great price, its
quiet, and its an excellent performer (512kb cache).  Here are some test
results:

486dx2-66 VLB
8 Meg memory
IBM Deskstar Pro DPEA-31080 1 Gig drive
        partitioned as:
        /hda1 - DOS partition
        /hda2 - 16 meg Linux swap partition
        /hda3 - native Linux partition

HD Controller: Promise 2300+

best results of 'hdparm -t /dev/hda3'

Timing buffer-cache reads:   32 MB in  3.71 seconds = 8.63 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads:  16 MB in  5.88 seconds = 2.72 MB/sec
Estimating raw driver speed: 16 MB in  4.03 seconds = 3.98 MB/sec

Here are the results of DOS Coretest (version 3.02)
Buffered read  rate (kb/sec)  9808
Average seek times (ms) 9.4
Track to track seek (ms) 2.2
Performance index: 64.23

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