Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!spdcc!ima!mirror!prism!rob
From: rob@prism.TMC.COM
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Dell 310 flame (of sorts)
Message-ID: <206900129@prism>
Date: 10 Oct 89 12:47:00 GMT
References: <8634@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Lines: 23
Nf-ID: #R:spool.cs.wisc.edu:-863400:prism:206900129:000:1309
Nf-From: prism.TMC.COM!rob    Oct 10 08:47:00 1989


    I suppose the lesson here is that even within a fairly specific area 
like 'disk performance' there is lots of fuzziness in speed measurements. 
Take two disks, one with fast access and slow transfer, the other with slow 
access and fast transfer. Which will be faster? 

   The disk in the Dell 325, which has a very fast (14ms) access time but 
only a moderately fast transfer rate (550Ksec to 800K/sec, depending on 
which benchmark you use), does well in database applications, program 
compiles, and other applications which tend to use disk data repetitively.
A disk with a higher transfer rate, even if its access time were slower,
would probably do better on loading large programs or data files. As
always, the choice comes down to the task in question.
 
   On the question of which machines I had compared it to, I've tested
it against 25Mhz machines from Compaq, IBM, and ALR. Running database
applications, it's faster than any of them by a comfortable margin. 
Interestingly, the disk in the Compaq had performance characteristics like 
those mentioned above - slower (19ms) access, but higher transfer (1Mb/sec). 
Though the Dell won in the benchmarks I was doing, there would undoubtedly 
be some tasks that would favor the Compaq.

   Enough of this nonsense. I want a 100Mb RAM-disk. :-)