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BENCHMARK PERFORMANCE – HARD DRIVE
We thought it smart to first test the Western Digital Black 1TB hard drive to demonstrate just how slow a hard drive is compared to an SSD, and in this case Intel Optane memory also. Don’t get me wrong; the WD Black is an excellent choice for a HDD and provides the one thing that SSDs cannot, which is very large capacity at great value.
Our end goal, however, is to draw a complete picture and allow you to determine if the difference in speed between the HDD and Intel Optane memory suits your needs.
Crystal Disk Info is a great tool for displaying the characteristics and health of storage devices. It displays everything from temperatures, to the number of hours the device has been powered, and even to the extent of informing you of the firmware of the device.
ATTO Disk Benchmark is perhaps one of the oldest benchmarks going and is definitely the main staple for manufacturer performance specifications. ATTO uses RAW or compressible data and, for our benchmarks, we use a set length of 256mb and test both the read and write performance of various transfer sizes ranging from 0.5 to 8192kb. Manufacturers prefer this method of testing as it deals with raw (compressible) data rather than random (includes incompressible data) which, although more realistic, results in lower performance results.
CRYSTAL DISK BENCHMARK VER. 5.2.1 X64
Crystal Disk Benchmark is used to measure read and write performance through sampling of random data which is, for the most part, incompressible. Performance is virtually identical, regardless of data sample so we have included only that using random data samples.
The toughest benchmark available for solid state drives is AS SSD as it relies solely on incompressible data samples when testing performance. For the most part, AS SSD tests can be considered the ‘worst case scenario’ in obtaining data transfer speeds and many enthusiasts like AS SSD for their needs.
ANVIL STORAGE UTILITIES PROFESSIONAL
Anvil’s Storage Utilities (ASU) are the most complete test bed available for the solid state drive today. The benchmark displays test results for, not only throughput but also, IOPS and Disk Access Times. Not only does it have a preset SSD benchmark, but also, it has included such things as endurance testing and threaded I/O read, write and mixed tests, all of which are very simple to understand and use in our benchmark testing.
The SSD Review uses benchmark software called PCMark Vantage x64 HDD Suite to create testing scenarios that might be used in the typical user experience. There are eight tests in all and the tests performed record the speed of data movement in MB/s to which they are then given a numerical score after all of the tests are complete.
HDD PERFORMANCE SUMMARY
Apologies for this and the next two benchmark pages being a bit long, however, we wanted to be able to draw a complete picture with as many examples as possible.
Examining these results for the hard drive, it is pretty easy to see that the hard drive is slow when comparing to flash media, but take a close look at the low 4K read speed in the Crystal DiskMark result at 1.3MB/s. What?!?! Yes, this is the culprit that results in your getting a coffee or some other activity while your PC is starting. This result is the cause of slow startups, shut down, and application use to name just a few. In fact, testing this drive took so long on AS SSD (software not meant for HDD), that we had to stop the benchmark. PCMark Vantage is a great example of just how slow data moves with a hard drive. Now let’s take a look at the Intel Optane Memory module…plugged in as an SSD!
Would you consider testing these with the built in Windows 10 Ready Boost alongside the plain HDD?
Are you asking for a comparison of Ready Boost using a USB to that of Optane. You do realize that the USB has a much lower low 4k read speed than the Optane dont you… to the tune of 150-200 times. We are an SSD site but I have tested Ready Boost on my own in Windows. IMO it is more gimmic than worth the trouble. With Optane… in this case, the startup system files are readily available in the cache to equal the startup of an SSD. I might think that alone would dissuade any thought of comparison. Thanks for taking the time to comment.
My apologies, I thought it was possible to dedicate a SSD 32 GB or smaller as a Ready Boost drive. If that is not the case then disregard. Thanks for the review. I hope Micron releases a more hardware agnostic version in the future (for AMD boards with NVMe).
No need to apologize.. stuff like this makes us think outside the box. This actually let me in another direction to confirm something i wasn’t sure of with respect to new Optane.
Les, I would have like to have seen the Intel DC P3700 in the Real World File Transfer Tests, having said that the Kingston DCP1000 is beyond insane at File Transfers, the Intel Optane excels at 4K low queue depth Reads and the Lowest Latencies i’ve seen to date
“on a green PCB”
Interesting. If the PCB is environment friendly then it is bigger news to me then optane memory.
I wonder how reliable Optane is. Anandtech.com reported that when it failed it took some data with it. I have no issue recommending SSHD over plain HDD but what is worrying me is required software component.
So it performs admirably as a read cache, but what about as a write cache? Would the low latency be good enough to overcome the limited sequential write speeds if faced with continuous cache eviction?
My system runs quite a bit faster than the Intel upgrade:
9,068 MB / s Read, 14,048 MB / sec Write.
4K Random Read 1,556 MB / sec, 4K Random Write 1,068 MB / sec.
https://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/primo-cache/
Romex Primo Caching Software accelerates all read / write operations with RAM and SSD caching, turbo charging any CPU to run just as fast as the RAM can go…
People keep trying to fix the Hard Drive speed bottle neck in hardware,
when it is much easier to fix in software, and RAM caching…
Primo Cache works similar to the Intel device. Say you have 32GB of RAM,
set aside 16 GB for a super sized RAM cache – all read / writes work at RAM speeds.
Primo Cache pairs ANY SSD device to the RAM cache, for a second level of persistent caching. All the stuff you use all the time, is copied to the SSD.
On boot up, the SSD reloads all your commonly used info into the RAM cache,
and the RAM cache dynamically updates itself to constantly keep you at top speed.
Go ahead and hook up your favorite 8 TB Seagate Drives to your system…
PrimoCache ensures your Big Iron hard drives run at RAMming speed.
Drop down box with sub-pages please. Clicking 1-9 is so annoying
There’s an option being overlooked by both Intel and MS:
Readyboost filters small (~4K), random, oft used files onto media with lower latency than the main drive.
The 2 drives then read/write files they are best and fastest at handling, at the same time.
ie: A sort of ‘optimised for drive characteristics’, RAID 0…
Now look at the random 4K read performance of Optane versus SATA SSDs and even NVME SSDs:
https://www.google.co.za/search?q=optane+4k+random+write&safe=off&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwib_bSaqNHTAhWqB8AKHdxABmcQ_AUIDCgD&biw=1536&bih=798#safe=off&tbm=isch&q=optane+4k+random+versus+sata+ssd&imgrc=_
Writes are not as impressive as random writes go into the DRAM cache on the SSDs, but:
> This info can be lost in a power outage, so safer.
> The low write speeds are only valid until the DRAM cache is full.
> There should be an increase in SSD life as info is written to flash in 2-4 MB blocks
nowadays.
I think it’s worth testing to see if Readyboost does a better job than Intel’s RST due to this filtering/Optimised RAID 0..?
Info on overriding MS’s Readyboost settings, to test this:
https://hatsoffsecurity.com/2015/05/31/force-enabling-readyboost-windows-78/
But will anyone? The ‘not invented here’ force is strong in humans! 🙂
Romex:
Everyone knows that with your software installed you basically end up using a HDD benchmark to benchmark RAM.
Untick ‘Direct IO’ in Atto and MS’s Super/prefetch makes your block cache look stupid.
Can your software do predictive caching, without wasting RAM by caching what’s already cached by prefetch?
ie: Write software that switches on Superfetch with SSDs and add your SSD-saving ‘deferred writes’ and I’ll buy it!
I will say that your caching of HDDs to SSDs is very good and universal, so if one wants to cache any HDD onto any SSD, or even RAIDed SSDs; PrimoCache is the best option.