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Intel's™ FoxHollow Server, Grosse Point Server Mainboard (S3420GPLX) and Intel® Xeon® 3470 Processor

Stop We Have More Money - Introducing the WD 2TB RE4 7200RPM Drive

That's the call all too often heard in small business.    All good servers require back up facilities, whether it be in a mass storage box (more to follow at a later date on this one) or; we utilise that raid card  we mentioned in the beginning with a couple of new 2TB RE4 hard discs from Western Digital.  Taking these drives and the raid card we configured them onto the system and into a nice raid 1 array giving us a nice secure back up scenario.  But before heading into the depths of performance lets have a quick look into these monstrous drives

WD RE4 enterprise SATA hard drives combine 64 MB cache with SATA 3 Gb/s transfer rate and dual stage actuation for lightning-fast performance in demanding server and storage applications. Technologically advanced acoustics minimize noise. Cool drive operation and enhanced reliability features help protect the drive and the data stored on it.

Key Features

Massive capacity - WD RE4 Enterprise SATA drives are available with a cavernous 2 TB capacity.

Dual actuator technology - A head positioning system with two actuators that improves positional accuracy over the data track(s). The primary actuator provides coarse displacement using conventional electromagnetic actuator principles. The secondary actuator uses piezoelectric motion to fine tune the head positioning to a higher degree of accuracy.

Dual processor - With double the processing power, WD RE4 boasts the highest performance of any drive in the WD RE family.

StableTrac - The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking during read and write operations.

RAFF - Enhanced RAFF technology includes sophisticated electronics to monitor the drive and correct both linear and rotational vibration in real time. The result is a significant performance improvement in high vibration environments over the previous generation of drives.

IntelliSeek - Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower unnecessary power consumption, noise, and vibration. View demo >

Multi-axis shock sensor - Automatically detects the subtlest shock events and compensates to protect the data.

RAID-specific, time-limited error recovery (TLER) - Prevents drive fallout caused by the extended hard drive error-recovery processes common to desktop drives.

Third generation dynamic fly height - Each read-write head’s fly height is adjusted in real time for optimum reliability.

Thermal extended burn-in test - Each drive is put through extended burn-in testing with thermal cycling to ensure reliable operation.

NoTouch ramp load technology - The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit.

Active Power Save - Delivers best-in-class power consumption through advanced WD firmware that conserves power in active seek modes without degrading performance.

Therefore our system configuration now looks like so for the rest of the tests.    This system build will keep many a small business happy for many years to come with the correct administration and maintenance

Intel's™ FoxHollow (S3420GPLX) Server and Intel Xeon® 3470 Processor

Component

Test System Components

CPU

1 X 2.93GHz Intel® Xeon® Processor X3470

Mainboard

Intel® Server Board  S3420GPLX

Memory

2 X 2GB Crucial DDR3 1333MHz Registered ECC

Hard Drive

1 X WD 300GB VelociRaptor

Raid Hard Drives

2 X WD 2TB WD RE4 enterprise SATA (7200rpm)

Raid Card

LSI MegaRAID SAS 8704EM2

Graphic Card

1 X ATI FirePro® V5700

VGA Driver

Current Online 8.634 WHQL 32-bit

Operating System

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 32- Bit SP2

The first run of tests we contacted 1 of the new WD 2TB RE4 drives directly to the mainboard for baseline results then hooked up both drives onto the LSI Raid card configuring the drives into a Raid 1 array.

Page 1 - Intel® Xeon® processor 3400 series
Page 2 -
Intel® Server Board S3420GP and Intel® Server Chassis SC5650
Page 3 - System Build Pictures
Page 4 - System Set-Up and Software Used
Page 5 -
SiSoftware Sandra 2009 SP4 Part 1
Page 6 - SiSoftware Sandra 2009 SP4 Part 2 and Everest Ultimate 5.02 Cache and Memory Test

Page 7 - Hard Drive Test
Page 8 - PC Mark 2005 Advanced and Performance Mark Version 7
Page 9 - Rendering Tests

Page 10 - Stop. We Have More Money - Introducing the WD 2TB RE4 7200RPM Drive
Page 11 - 1 X WD 2TB RE4 7200RPM Drive Tests
Page 12 - 2 X WD 2TB RE4 7200RPM Configured into Raid 1 Drive Tests
Page 12a -
Windows Shadow Back-Up and File Transfer Tests
Page 14 - Conclusions and Awards

 

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