Path: rcfnews.cs.umass.edu!barrett From: rkruszka@carroll1.cc.edu (Randy Kruszka) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Western Digital Caviar AC31200F hard drive Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware Date: 9 Nov 1995 17:27:42 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 302 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <47tdme$7kc@kernighan.cs.umass.edu> Reply-To: rkruszka@carroll1.cc.edu (Randy Kruszka) NNTP-Posting-Host: astro.cs.umass.edu Keywords: hardware, storage, hard drive, IDE, commercial Originator: barrett@astro.cs.umass.edu PRODUCT NAME Western Digital Caviar AC31200F, Version 14.0 BRIEF DESCRIPTION This is an Enhanced-IDE 1.222GB (AmigaDOS) 1.282GB (WD) 3.5"H 10ms 4500 rpm 64KB cache hard drive with 250000 Hours MTBF. (Whew!) AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Western Digital Corporation Address: 8105 Irvine Center Drive Irvine, California 92718 USA Telephone: (714) 932-5000 (714) 932-4900 [Tech support] World Wide Web: http://www.wdc.com LIST PRICE I don't know what the list price is, but I paid $290 US without shipping in October 1995. SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE An IDE host interface. The Amiga has a 2GB partition limit. SOFTWARE I recommend AmigaDOS 3.1 because I heard that it solves the initial "insert disk" screen on power-up. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 4000, 2MB Chip RAM, 16MB Fast RAM. 1 internal 1.76MB floppy drive Emplant Deluxe GVP I/O Extender Kickstart and Workbench 3.0. INSTALLATION If your computer is still under warranty, you should first check to see if opening it will cause warranty claim problems. Make sure that you do not have any static electricity on yourself, and that you do not rush this. I still consider all drives to be pretty fragile. If you do not feel confident, let someone else do the installation. That said, I removed the two screws on the back of the A4000 and slid the cover off. The drive mount can be used for two 3.5"H drives if you want, and removes with 4 screws. I mounted the WD drive in place of the Seagate and just set the Seagate on top of the manual while I copied files over. I figured the fastest way would be to make the WD the Master and Seagate the Slave, and then when you are done you can remove the Seagate and make the WD the only drive. If this is an addition, you just have to move the jumper on both drives to let the interface know you have two drives. For you Seagate users, you could leave the 124MB drive in but it resets so slow that the Amiga must wait for it. It is a mere 10% of the WD anyway, so there's not much to be gained. Partitioning it with HDToolbox was interesting...yes, I'll call it that! I wanted 4 slices, and found out that after the first partition was even numbered the rest wanted to be odd. After some sliding around I had: 20M (20.18) 300M (300.73) 300M (300.23) 600M (600.47) = 1220M (1221.6). ()=Actual size since AmigaDOS truncates decimals. 1MB=1024000 Bytes. I don't know how WD gets 1282MB. To confuse you further, SysInfo reports 1222 MB and HDToolbox 1222.1 MB. The "info" command lists the above (). REVIEW Now for the info you have been waiting for! My original idea was to get something like the Seagate Barracuda and WarpEngine. It would be so fast that it would get done before I even start! :) Then I added up the prices... :( Then I found out that WD says "100% IDE compatibility". And at $290 US, :) :) :) Since the A4000's interface is IDE and not EIDE, you will not get the 5.26MB/s maximum transfer rate that WD says you will. However, SysInfo reports 1.67MB/s (a nice change from the Seagate ~1MB/s) and I included the Seagate vs. WD info below on V4.2 DiskSpeed & ScsiSpeed. SCSISPEED RESULTS (Using FFS-International) Comments: ScsiSpeed 4.2 Started from Project Icon CPU Speed Rating: 3549 *Seagate 124MB* Testing with a 512 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Read from SCSI: 145002 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 79% Testing with a 4096 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Read from SCSI: 197688 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 84% Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Read from SCSI: 804454 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 46% Testing with a 262144 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Read from SCSI: 1030317 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 33% Testing with a 512 byte, MEMF_CHIP, LONG-aligned buffer. Read from SCSI: 150392 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 73% Testing with a 4096 byte, MEMF_CHIP, LONG-aligned buffer. Read from SCSI: 257919 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 73% Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_CHIP, LONG-aligned buffer. Read from SCSI: 678297 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 38% Testing with a 262144 byte, MEMF_CHIP, LONG-aligned buffer. Read from SCSI: 795165 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 29% Average CPU Available: 57% | CPU Availability index: 2023 CPU Speed Rating: 3549 *WDC 1.2GB* Testing with a 512 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Read from SCSI: 515993 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 33% Testing with a 4096 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Read from SCSI: 1453875 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 11% Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Read from SCSI: 1625292 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 8% Testing with a 262144 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Read from SCSI: 1652222 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 9% Testing with a 512 byte, MEMF_CHIP, LONG-aligned buffer. Read from SCSI: 445235 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 25% Testing with a 4096 byte, MEMF_CHIP, LONG-aligned buffer. Read from SCSI: 1023385 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 8% Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_CHIP, LONG-aligned buffer. Read from SCSI: 1204224 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 3% Testing with a 262144 byte, MEMF_CHIP, LONG-aligned buffer. Read from SCSI: 1232245 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 2% <-- Ouch! Average CPU Available: 12% | CPU Availability index: 426 Summary: It maxes out the IDE interface and nearly stops the CPU as a result. I heard this has something to do with how IDE works. You can be pretty safe assuming that this is the limit for the A4000 IDE. DISKSPEED RESULTS Device: hd1: Buffers: 30 *Seagate 124MB* Comments: DiskSpeed 4.2 Started from Project Icon CPU Speed Rating: 3105 Testing directory manipulation speed. File Create: 34 files/sec | CPU Available: 78% File Open: 73 files/sec | CPU Available: 62% Directory Scan: 314 files/sec | CPU Available: 50% File Delete: 208 files/sec | CPU Available: 36% Seek/Read: 74 seeks/sec (13.5ms) | CPU Available: 86% Average CPU Available: 62% | CPU Availability index: 1925 Device: hd2: Buffers: 30 *WDC 1.2GB* CPU Speed Rating: 3105 Testing directory manipulation speed. File Create: 49 files/sec | CPU Available: 72% File Open: 99 files/sec | CPU Available: 54% Directory Scan: 551 files/sec | CPU Available: 11% File Delete: 332 files/sec | CPU Available: 12% Seek/Read: 114 seeks/sec (8.8ms) | CPU Available: 80% Average CPU Available: 46% | CPU Availability index: 1428 Summary: I expected it to be faster everywhere and use more CPU again, but 8.8ms access time??? If this is true, apparently it is not affected by the "slow" interface. I believe that it is, since an EIDE-IBM friend saw as low as 7.5ms. 10ms looks conservative. DOCUMENTATION It comes with documentation which has some useful specifications in it, along with jumper and installation instructions, but most of it is Windows NT, '95, UNIX, etc. specific. Their WWW site has the best stats. You also get a disk to get you beyond the 528MB IBM-BIOS limit, which isn't necessary for the A4000. If you can install the drive without reading the manual, it probably won't be that useful. But, you can read all of the trouble you'd have to go thorough to get it working on an IBM. Maybe my struggles with getting HDToolbox to use the whole drive equaled it anyway... LIKES This drive is mass storage at a nice price. It does not need a new interface, and actually reports the drive information properly. The 100% IDE compatibility seems to be true. It is quieter and uses less power than the Seagate 124MB, but is a little noisier during reads. The 3 year warranty is nice, but if you need to use it with 1.2GB you won't be too happy! It resets very quickly after the Ctrl-A-A sequence, basically a blink-pause-blink read. DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS It spins-up slower than the Seagate so my un-upgradeable KS 3.0 times out too soon and shows the "insert disk" screen on power up. This is not WD's fault, and Commodore fixed it in KS 3.1. This would be my only suggestion for improvement. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS There are other drive test reports on math.uh.edu so I won't repeat them here. If the IDE interface could handle it, I would guess that the only drive currently faster than this one is the 1.6GB WD. Just for your information (it did not change my mind) at one local computer store they told me not to get WD since they tend to stall often. They recommended the "8ms" Samsung for $239 US. Statistics would tell you that if this were true, WD probably sells 100 (or more) drives to every Samsung. My IBM friend sells WD drives with many upgrades he does and has not seen one problem. Interestingly enough, after I saw the Samsung manual it said 11ms. So guess what... they measured it and took the lowest number they saw. BUGS None found. The maxtransfer bug on some IDE drives is not on this one. I was wondering if that bug had to be there for 100% compatibility! It supports the "sleep" command also. My Seagate did not. VENDOR SUPPORT None needed. I hope it stays that way. WARRANTY The product warranty is 3 years. It covers only the drive itself, and the repaired drive's warranty will be either the remainder of the original warranty or 90 days - whichever is longer. Claims must be made within 90 days of the defect's discovery, but I'm not sure why anyone would want to wait. It does not say that the warranty isn't transferable. It does say "within 3 years from the Buyer's date of purchase from ... dealer". It does not specifically say that it is, either. You may need a lawyer to decide. :) CONCLUSIONS I'd say that the drive would get 5/5 stars, and the Commodore interface 2/5 stars! It is equal to or better than what I expected. I thought that I'd be seeing at least 2MB/s transfer rates since the A1200 gets a similar speed, but it's not the drive's fault. If you are looking for a larger than 1GB drive (which someday may be made to run much faster) at a good price, this is it. COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright 1995 Randy Kruszka. Email: rkruszka@carroll1.cc.edu --- Accepted and posted by Daniel Barrett, comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews