ICY DOCK MB664US-1S: eSATA with a twist
by Dave Robinet on October 9, 2007 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Application Tests
Our application benchmarks are designed to show application performance results with times being reported in seconds, with lower scores being better. While these tests will show some differences between the drives it is important to understand we are not measuring the pure performance of the hard drive but how well our platform performs with each individual drive. The performance of a hard drive is an integral part of the computer platform but other factors such as memory, CPU, core logic, and even driver choice can play a major role in determining how well the hard drive performs in any given task.
As the results of these tests can be largely predicted at this point in time, we'll reserve comment until the end.
AnyDVD 6.1
This test has us utilizing the "ripping" function of AnyDVD to copy the Office Space DVD file from our source drive to our test drive. Our DVD features 29 files totaling 7.55GB of data and is an excellent test for determining the write speed of a drive.
Game Load Test
Our Sims 2: Open for Business test measures the time it takes to load the initial portion of the game. Our application timer starts when the game icon is initiated until the neighborhood menu appears.
Game Level Load
This test centers on the actual loading of a playable level within our game selections. The Battlefield 2 test measures the time it takes to load the Daqing Oilfields level. Our application timer begins when the start single player icon is initiated and ends when the join game icon is visible.
File Copy Performance
Our file copy test measures the time it takes to transfer our test folder that contains 29 files, 1 folder, and has 7.55GB of data from our source drive to the target test drive. This benchmark is disk write intensive and requires a fast storage system. The second test does copies the same folder on the test drive to another folder on the same drive.
Our application benchmarks are designed to show application performance results with times being reported in seconds, with lower scores being better. While these tests will show some differences between the drives it is important to understand we are not measuring the pure performance of the hard drive but how well our platform performs with each individual drive. The performance of a hard drive is an integral part of the computer platform but other factors such as memory, CPU, core logic, and even driver choice can play a major role in determining how well the hard drive performs in any given task.
As the results of these tests can be largely predicted at this point in time, we'll reserve comment until the end.
AnyDVD 6.1
This test has us utilizing the "ripping" function of AnyDVD to copy the Office Space DVD file from our source drive to our test drive. Our DVD features 29 files totaling 7.55GB of data and is an excellent test for determining the write speed of a drive.
Game Load Test
Our Sims 2: Open for Business test measures the time it takes to load the initial portion of the game. Our application timer starts when the game icon is initiated until the neighborhood menu appears.
Game Level Load
This test centers on the actual loading of a playable level within our game selections. The Battlefield 2 test measures the time it takes to load the Daqing Oilfields level. Our application timer begins when the start single player icon is initiated and ends when the join game icon is visible.
File Copy Performance
Our file copy test measures the time it takes to transfer our test folder that contains 29 files, 1 folder, and has 7.55GB of data from our source drive to the target test drive. This benchmark is disk write intensive and requires a fast storage system. The second test does copies the same folder on the test drive to another folder on the same drive.
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Souka - Friday, October 12, 2007 - link
Drives have two basic benchmarks... latency and throughput.comments like, "a 500gb is almost equal"..or "those raptors are not worth the cost" kinda ignore the latency part of the equation.
Yes, most 500GB drives equal, perhaps surpass, an older 150gb Raptor in some throughput benchmarks. But latency is still the raptors domain, and overal performance benifts quite a bit from this.
There are plenty of articles on such a topic...
My $.02
retrospooty - Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - link
"The fact is for the price of a 150GB raptor you can get a 500-750GB drive that performs almost as well. Now that there are better performing drives available, those raptors just are not worth the cost anymore."almost as well, yes, but the 150gb Raptor is 2 years old now, it was released on Jan 1st 2006. They are due for an update any time now (prolly Jan 1st 2008) and you can bet that a 300g (or higher) Raptor with 32mb cache and Perpendicular recording will own the market once again by a large margin.
lennylim - Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - link
I bought the MB559. The attraction to me is that I can get additional trays for $20 (expensive, but not too expensive). At $70 for one enclosure, this seems overpriced.The power connector on the bracket is very attractive to me, actually. I wish the MB559 comes with one. They had a MIR last month where you can get one free if you bought a MB559, but I bought mine too early. You can have the bracket installed on your home machine, so that you can have the power adapter in your laptop bag all the time. And reducing a wall wart is always a good idea to me. The bracket us available for purchase, but at over $20 shipped, it's too expensive for me.
ninjit - Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - link
The product info for the MB664US-1S on ICY DOCK's website touts the ability to hotswap the actual hard-drive in the enclosure.Did you test this, and/or have any comments?
FrankThoughts - Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - link
Page three says "We implemented AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) in the BIOS to properly test the hot swap capabilities of this drive enclosure when utilizing the eSATA interface. Without the proper matrix storage driver support and AHCI implementation, hot swapping was not possible with our test bed."I would assume that means with the test chipset and those drivers installed, hotswap works. Using it with other chipsets and drivers? Sounds like something they could maybe test further on other systems.
Olaf van der Spek - Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - link
Why is power over SATA never used? Then you could stick with a single connector and not need the external power supply (except when you use USB).ninjit - Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - link
There is no power over SATA.the SATA spec designed a NEW power connector, over the old Molex one, which is inline with the data-connector allowing easy cable-less drive installations, through direct mating to backplanes, but it's still a separate power connector and needs its own cable otherwise.
eSATA (which is what's tested here with the ICY-DOCK) is just data, there is no associated external power port to go a long with it.
Olaf van der Spek - Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - link
> There is no power over SATA.Not over the SATA data cable, no.
Let's rephrase the question: why aren't SATA connectors/cables used that transport both data and power?
Souka - Friday, October 12, 2007 - link
Well, here's my thoughts why.1. The power would then have to come from the motherboard, which means more tracepaths on the circuit board and power drawn from the motherboard itself.
2. SATA cables would be bigger, and you'd have two SATA cable standards
3. Power and data on same cable for SATA might cause interference with the data trasnsfer quality.
4. Power and Data on a mass storage device hasn't been the standard in the past, and changing standards is a risk manufacturers often won't take.
My $.02