Mini Hard Drive Performance

Comparing the Mini's hard drive performance to my x86 Linux box was a little disappointing. The PC drive is almost twice as fast with buffered disk reads. I have a WD1600JB 7200RPM drive in my x86 box. Testing with hdparm under linux 2.6.9 shows:

/dev/hda:
Timing cached reads: 1244 MB in 2.00 seconds = 621.47 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 170 MB in 3.01 seconds = 56.47 MB/sec

Performing the same test with the Mini under linux 2.6.9 shows:

/dev/hda:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 1416 MB in 2.01 seconds = 705.99 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 94 MB in 3.02 seconds = 31.08 MB/sec

The tests are very repeatable. The info on the Mini drive that hdparm returns is:

/dev/hda:

Model=ST940110A, FwRev=3.07, SerialNo=3KW4VLHC
Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=off
CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=4228907259, LBA=yes, LBAsects=78140160
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2
AdvancedPM=yes: unknown setting WriteCache=enabled
Drive conforms to: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 2:

One difference is the Mini drive has 2MB of cache, as opposed to 8MB on the WD drive in the x86 PC. Searching the Seagate site for ST940110A does not return anything. Plugging the model and serial number into their warranty info page results in a page explaining that it is an OEM drive and to contact the system manufacturer for service.

Dropping the last zero from the model number, ST94011A, turns up these specs for a 40GB Momentus drive with 2MB cache, 5400RPM, and 12ms access time. I suspect this is the drive that is in the Mini.