HD speed comparison.

A quick follow-up to my post which describes my backup workflow: I wanted to know how the different drive setups perform. I grabbed a free application called Helios LAN test which originally was designed to test LAN performance, but lets you choose local drives as testing source. You can run various tests on the drive but I sticked to simple read/write tests with 300MB files.

Halios LAN test: Setup for the drive test. I just ran the read/write tests.

I tested following drive configurations: Apple software striped RAID (configured in disk utility with 32k and 128k blocks) with two 1,5TB 7200rpm internal SATA drives, internal VelociRaptor SAS drive with 10,000rpm and 300GB, internal SATA drive with 7200rpm and 1,5 TB, external SATA drive with 7200rpm and 1,0TB connected via eSATA over the Sonnet Tempo SATA E2P and an external SATA drive with 7200rpm and 1,0TB connected via USB 2.0. Here are the results:

Conclusion: A striped RAID is fast! Even the disk utility-software-configured RAID is. And eSATA is fast too. So my workflow is as following: Use the VelociRaptor for system files, use the one internal SATA for stock footage and stuff, use the striped RAID for daily work, but backup frequently to external SATA drives via eSATA.