7200 RPM Performance

Hmm, I take that back. Besides CPU utilization being extremely high, performance is right on with my gaming machine.For some reason I thought I read that the AA1 was not SATAII. I know I have tested my Raptors on two different SATA spec'd PC 's and it was amazing, the difference.

Below are the specs and just for grins I put the specs on my other drives On a side note, I plan on putting 4 32gb Samsung SLC SSD's in RAID0 on my gaming machine

AA1-WD160 in my AA1: Random access 16.9ms/Avg. read 57.7MB/s CPU 6-8%

AA1-WD160 in my gaming machine: Random access 16.4ms/Avg. read 57.9MB/s CPU1%

Seagate 500g: Random access 13.7ms/Avg. read 76.2MB/s

Raptors RAID0: Random access 8.2ms/Avg. read 136.3MB/s

 

Hitachi 7K500 7200RPM 500GB hdd
average read: ~80MB/s
Random access: ~12ms
CPU ussage: 0%

my 4GB usb flashdrive:
average read: ~900MB/s according to atto
random access: 0.1ms
The atto result can be viewed here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=371773
CPU ussage on AAO: around 75%.

 

lol 900MB/s thats 15x over maximum speed of standard USB 2.0. What one mine friend used to say "Go ask grandma to cook you Sprite.".

 

I guess my usb flash drives owns all SSDs... :lol: JK
It's probably a glitch in ATTO benchmark tool and partly due to the ram caching program to increase flashdrive's throughput. Instead of writing data to flashdrive instantly, it caches to the ram then write the data to flashdrive probably in groups of 512KB blocks to increase the throughput. So the ATTO benchmark tool is probably just testing the speed of my RAM instead of the flashdrive itself.

 

It's not perfectly clear from the Intel ICH7 documentation (http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/datasheet/307013.pdf), but it would appear to suggest that the ICH7 used in the AA1 does support some elements of the SATA II/300 specification:

Serial ATA (SATA) Controller (Desktop and Mobile Only)
The ICH7 has an integrated SATA host controller that supports independent DMA
operation on four ports (desktop only) or two ports (mobile only) and supports data
transfer rates of up to 3.0 Gb/s (300 MB/s). The SATA controller contains two modes of
operation – a legacy mode using I/O space, and an AHCI mode using memory space.
SATA and PATA can also be used in a combined function mode (where the SATA function
is used with PATA). In this combined function mode, AHCI mode is not used. Software
that uses legacy mode will not have AHCI capabilities.
The ICH7 supports the Serial ATA Specification, Revision 1.0a. The ICH7 also supports
several optional sections of the Serial ATA II: Extensions to Serial ATA 1.0
Specification, Revision 1.0 (AHCI support is required for some elements).

Allegedly, the mobile version of the ICH7 used in the AA1 is only good for transfer rates up to 100MB/s anyway and of course AHCI and therefore NCQ are crippled by the AA1 BIOS, which kinda makes SATA II drives pointless as far as the AA1 is concerned.

AFAIK it's impossible to use hdparm and the like to query whether the drives are operating in SATA 150 or SATA 300 mode because the AA1 forces them to use IDE emulation.

 

Also.. 99.99% of the laptop selling right now only recognize SATAII drives as SATAI. So even if you get the latest chipset and a ultrafast ssd, you'll still limited by the SATA I interface.

 

WTB AHCI BIOS hack!

 

I finally got my HDtach and pics up.

Check out my copper heatsink too

Click here for web page

 

Ok, I have read through this posting a couple times and some others for HDD. I have the 120gb HDD. I have been into the system to replace RAM so know how to get to the HDD. I guess what I'm looking for is a 320gb HDD that will run faster than my stock, and that is simple to replace, unscrewing the old HDD and unplugging the clip. Take the new HDD and snap in and screw in and poof away I go. I understand that the real bottleneck will be the atom processor, I just want to tweak as much as possible. I've read about the WDC Scorpio and a Samsung. I have read about the 5400 and 7200 with the mixed bag of results. Let me know what you guys think on the easiest one please.

 

They are all like that. Remove screws holding HDD bracket, remove HDD from system, remove bracket, install bracket onto new HDD, install HDD into system and secure.

The WD Black is the best 320GB drive out there right now.

 

Tom's hardware did a comprehensive group test of 2.5" drives recently.

The WD 7200rpm drives ranked best for performance, however the Seagate drives were not far behind and were superior in terms of power consumption. Bearing in mind the performance limitations imposed by the SATA interface implementation in the AA1, the reduced power consumption of the Seagate drives may make them a better choice.

 

I recently upgraded my netbook (Samsung) with Western Digital Scorpio Black 160GB.
How it affects performance can be seen here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=379623&highlight=WD1600BEKT

To anyone considering upgrading to 7200rpm, I recommend using single platter disks. Like WD1600BEKT instead of WD3200BEKT. Or Seagate 7200.4 250GB instead of 500GB. Single platter drives tend to make less noise, vibration and heat.

By the way, in the new Acer 751 upgrading will not have much effect because the hard drive transfer rate is capped at 45MB/sec. I'm still trying to figure out why. Here's the thread I started: http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=87&t=14463

 

I'm extending this thread longer than it should be probably. I apologize. I'm just reading through and clicking the links. I have the ST9160310AS drive. 120GB and 5400 speed. From what I have read it looks like it I'm looking for a speed increase I am better to go with a 160 or 250gb hard drive versus the 320gb hard drive. I know you can only max out so much. I have maxed my RAM, so thought I'd try the hard drive. Am I correct on this? I'm looking to purchase something. However it seems like with one partition, my HDD seems snappy. Thanks all

 

I downloaded HDTune and really don't know what these results mean or tell me. I'm looking for if I should upgrade and see a difference or will be fine with what I have
HD Tune Pro: ST9160310AS Benchmark

Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 8.9 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 66.0 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 51.0 MB/sec
Access Time : 26.1 ms
Burst Rate : 81.0 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 14.9%

This is for my stock drive. I just had WMP open I believe

Thanks,

 

that's not an accurate test seeing as how you had wmp open.

 

Ok, here should be another.

HD Tune Pro: ST9160310AS Benchmark

Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 4.2 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 66.0 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 43.7 MB/sec
Access Time : 24.0 ms
Burst Rate : 88.9 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 5.5%

That was just with Avira in the background and desktop XP open. Does this help?

 

To get the best results you should kill as many background processes as possible. Average transfer rate in your first run was good.

But the Seagate 5400.5 is a slow performer no matter what, as you can see in these benchmarks: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009 ... ,1133.html
Acces times of 24ms are very slow. My WD1600BEKT does 14ms.

Under light use it won't really show. You'll notice it when you're multitasking.

 

Thats exactly what info I was looking for. Thanks Phil. I know what I need to do.

 

Ok, one last thought. There is another post that is mentioning that the chipset may be slowing down the HDD speeds. I was planning to get the 320gb WD Scorpio, but if the chipset is going to hinder my performance then.....

This is a good post guys. I have learned a lot through this. Thanks,

 

It seems that the chipset in my 751 (11.6") is limiting HDD performance. Acer 9" and 10" use a different chipset so I don't expect it to be a problem.

You could consider getting a Hitachi 5K500.b (500GB), it's almost as fast as WD3200BEKT but uses less power and creates less vibration.

Here's the topic om my 751's HDD performance.
viewtopic.php?f=87&t=14463