[net.micro.mac] DiskBench3 Measurements

hamachi@KIM.BERKELEY.EDU (Gordon Hamachi) (04/21/86)

I went to ComputerWare in Palo Alto today and ran a disk benchmark program
called "DiskBench3".  It reads and writes 32K blocks, and comes up with three
measures:  read time, write time, and access time.  It isn't at all clear that
the benchmark measures the right thing, but it does tell you something.

I measured a number of hard disks and floppy disks:

Disk                    Read       Write        Access    Advertised Price
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Data Frame 20           1336        1401        463          $895
LoDown 10               1495        1507        305          $695
Paradise Mac 20         7451        8063        (failed)     ?
DataSpace 800K floppy   8583       12049        (failed)     $267
MicroTech 800K floppy   7296       10887        (failed)     ?

Notes:  The Paradise drive is little faster than a floppy disk!  It works
	    through the serial port rather than the SCSI port.  It was
	    tested on a Mac 512K with the old 64K ROMs, while all others
	    were tested on a Mac Plus.
        The LoDown 10 was noticably noisier than the Data Frame 20.
	Computerware says the LoDown 20 should be faster than the LoDown 10.
	"Coming soon":  MD Ideas 20 meg scsi hard disk, $895 advertised price.
	RAM disks seem to be an order of magnitude faster than the fastest
	    SCSI hard disks.
	Use these numbers for comparison only.  Your mileage may vary.

Disclaimer:
	I am not in any way associated with any computer store or any disk
	manufacturer.

--Gordon Hamachi