Workstation Pattern

The Workstation pattern simulates a typical workstation load at request queue depths up to 32. This test is performed on the full capacity of the HDDs as well as on a 32GB partition created on them.

To calculate the overall performance rating of a HDD in this test, we use the following formula:

Performance = Total I/O (queue=1)/1 + Total I/O (queue=2)/2 + Total I/O (queue=4)/4 + Total I/O (queue=8)/8 + Total I/O (queue=16)/16 + Total I/O (queue=32)/32.

You may have noted that I don’t use the Web-Server and File-Server patterns in this review. These server-oriented patterns have little practical worth for 2.5” HDDs because when a HDD of this form-factor is installed into a server, performance is usually not a priority.

There are two leaders here: the HDDs from Toshiba and Seagate. The Hitachi finds itself in the last place – this must be the consequence of the slump in the Database graph. The Samsung doesn’t show the oddities it demonstrated in the Database and Random Write patterns and takes a place right behind the leaders.

Nothing changed when I reduced the address space to 32GB: the Toshiba is still the winner and the Hitachi is the loser.