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**click to enlarge** |
**click to enlarge** |
We first need a SCSI controller to operate the
drive. Included in this setup was a LSI Logic U160 adapter. It
came with an 80 to 68 pin adapter for easy setup with a U160 silver cable
shown to your right.
OK. So we have everything we need.
Now let's get to the installation.
Some people have the impression that SCSI drives
are difficult to install. This is not necessarily true.
Actually, if your not setting up your drives in a RAID configuration, it's
actually quite simple. Just install your SCSI adapter card in an
available PCI slot, plug the cable from the card to the drive and go in your
motherboard BIOS and set the boot order to boot from SCSI instead of
Hard Drive or "HD0". That's it! Simple huh? Some
boards may require you to go into the cards BIOS and make some minor changes
there as well.
Now let's test it's performance. Here's
the test setup:
Test System
Mainboard: Shuttle AS45GTR
Processor: Intel P4 2.4Ghz
Memory: 512MB Corsair XMS3200
Video Card: ATI Radeon AIW 7500
I would first like to point out the poor SCSI
performance in WinXP systems. While I have read that SP1 takes care of a
majority of the issues reported, converting to dynamic disk is highly
recommended in order to get the best performance from your drive.
Converting your disk to dynamic is quite easy and leaves your data intact. It is done from the Disk Management Utility within WinXP.
Note that while converting to dynamic disk does not wipe out your data,
converting back to basic disk will.
Now that we have done that, let's get to the
benchmarks shall we?
HDTach
First benchmarking tool we will use it HDTach.
The 36Z15 had a maximum read speed of 49063kps
and an average read speed of 45255kps. CPU Utilization was a low 2.9%.
Access Time is calculated by adding seek time + latency. The average
rotational latency is 2.0ms. That brings the drive's seek time to 3.9ms.
That is slightly higher than it's rated 3.4ms seek time. Not bad!
In fact, it's about as low as it's going to get! The advantage of the
36Z15 is that it is a 15K rpm hard drive. The increase in speed provides
a lower rotational latency resulting in reduced access times.
Sandra 2003
Next, we will run Sandra's File System
Benchmark:
The IBM 36Z15 came in at 34628kb/s. That's
slightly higher than the 10K rpm drive.
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