X300 platter drive low scores?

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jarablue

[H]ard|Gawd
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May 31, 2003
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I just bought a x300 Toshiba drive that I am thinking of taking back due to it's low speeds. I think something is really wrong with the drive. What do you guys think of this benchmark? Is this in line for a platter drive with 128megs of cache? It is a Toshiba X300 4TB drive.

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Looks about right for a 4TB. The 5TB and 6TB are the ones with the 225MBps speeds.

Though you should use HD Tune for hard drives. Crystaldiskmark only works where there is free space and you have the fastest 14% of the drive used up.
 
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The X300 line is such a great value that I don't even care if the speeds are that bad. Actually, I keep wishing about 5400 RPM versions of the 5TB+ drives.
 
rive22 explained the reason. You have 540 GB used so you are likely not benchmarking the fastest part of the drive. Remember CDM will benchmark by creating a file at the first available block that is at least 1GiB (your test size). Since you have 540GB used and that is most likely on the outer most tracks your test is can be 540 GB (or more) into the drive.

I am thinking of taking back due to it's low speeds.
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Any 5400 drive like a Red will be slower. Although expect a 7200 RPM Seagate and possibly a WDC Black to be faster (provided they are empty).
 
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Those are 5400RPM drive speeds, use crystal driveinfo and check what the RPM for the drive is. although they say 128mb, I think a lot of it is used by the OS itself. Seagate RPM is 5900 and not 5400 RPM so their drives are always faster.
 
The drive is most definitely 7200 rpm. It states this on the box, by model number and on the drive itself. I went back to Microcenter and returned it. One, the drive was so loud that it sounded like a popcorn machine popping kernels. I mean the drive was LOUD. I got the 2tb WD Black drive for cheaper but not as much space. Running benchmarks on the WD Black drive, I was getting 190 reads and 183 writes. About 20mb/s faster seq reads and 30mb/s faster seq writes. And the WD Black drive is so much more quiet. I lost 2tb of space but its quieter and better performing. Thanks guys but the Toshiba was not for me. The WD has 64mb of cache vs 128 on the Toshiba. And the WD performs better. So, WD it is for me.

Edit: When I mean, the drive was loud, I mean this thing was almost pinging out the sound. Ping, clunk, ching, bing. Every time it needed to read or write data, I could hear it even with the air conditioner on over the TV. It was just to noisy to keep. The only benefit was for 119.99 you got 4tb of space. But for me I'd rather have a faster, better performing, quieter drive and sacrifice sheer size. Live and learn.
 
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When I mean, the drive was loud, I mean this thing was almost pinging out the sound. Ping, clunk, ching, bing. Every time it needed to read or wrote data,
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Toshiba 7200 RPM drives are noisy.

Running benchmarks on the WD Black drive, I was getting 190 reads and 183 writes
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Did you fill 540 GB of data on the WDC black before running the benchmark. I would expect the 2TB black to have lower CDM benchmark scores with 540GB filled.

Remember the inner most track will have about 1/2 the Sequential read and write performance of the outer most track. The more you fill the lower your CDM score.
 
I had about 50GB filled on the WD drive when I ran the test. I will run it again after I load my steam library on the drive. See what the scores will be. Honestly though, the better warranty and the noise reduction alone is worth my time replacing it. We'll see what the CDM scores will be after I get steam loaded on it. The toshiba had double the cache so I am thinking, if the WD performs near or as good, something wasn't right with the drive I got. Could of been a bad drive who knows. We'll see. I'll post the benchmark scores tonight.

I do miss the extra 2tb though but I am happy for now.
 
The cache is only good for small transfers. I doubt you will see any benefit in a benchmark.
 
The Toshiba has like a 50% lower latency compared to the seagates. Which is why it is louder. I never imagined that a 5 platter drive could have 10-11ms access times, the 2 platter seagates was 17-18ms.. If you have a lot of small file access that does make a difference. But an SSD has sub 1ms. I think thy have a program to set for quieter running which just means slowing the access times. I think the toshiba has both types of power saving modes. The seagates only have one. With the case, power supply and cpu fans I did not hear any difference other than the occassional drive access.
 
I don't know about Seagate drives but the Western Digital drive I have is quieter and for now, faster performing at 50GB full. Let's see how it performs at 500GB full. The noise difference it very noticeable. Who knows I could of gotten a bad drive.
 
The drive has 200GB written to it on this test.

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Think it may have been a bad Toshiba maybe? Regardless, when running CDM the drive was almost dead quiet. When I ran it on the Toshiba, I could hear the drive from my living room. To me, that is worth the trip to return the drive, the performance I am getting is just gravy on top.
 
Ok. I looked at it from Windows explorer and estimated. Loading up the drive now with games. See what I get.
 
181 to 173 reads and 174 to 155 writes. Could 400 gigs of data impact the drive that bad? That is 19MB hit on writes and 8MB hit on reads. Didn't think a drive would be affected like that with only 400gigs of data.
 
Could 400 gigs of data impact the drive that bad?
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Yes the more data you add the lower the STR numbers you will get in CDM. CDM is a benchmark that creates a large file in your filesystem. When you have data already written CDM will have to put the file further into the disk (on a smaller track) which will have lower sequential performance than the outer tracks. Remember the STR numbers will be 1/2 when the drive is reading / writing on the inner most tracks (when it is almost full). So less than 100 MB/s.

See here for the reason:
Are partitions to the inner/outer edge significantly faster
 
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jarablue said:
Running benchmarks on the WD Black drive, I was getting 190 reads and 183 writes. About 20mb/s faster seq reads and 30mb/s faster seq writes. And the WD Black drive is so much more quiet. I lost 2tb of space but its quieter and better performing. Thanks guys but the Toshiba was not for me. The WD has 64mb of cache vs 128 on the Toshiba. And the WD performs better. So, WD it is for me.

But for me I'd rather have a faster, better performing, quieter drive and sacrifice sheer size. Live and learn.
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Keep in mind, once you fill the drive past a certain point it's not actually faster than the Toshiba. Hard drive speeds are not linear, the data written near the end of a full 2TB WD Black will be slower than the 4TB Toshiba filled to 2TB. For hard drives, ditch crystaldiskmark and use HD tune. The main benefit of the WD Black is the dual processor.
 
As someone who can be very picky on noise, ya gotta go with what makes you happy. The toshiba 4tb I have that replaced a seagate 3tb (the famously dying model) is noticeably quieter.
 
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