Temperature, Acoustics, Reliability:
Heat is the biggest enemy of any electronic device and hard disks are no exception from this. In particular for RAIDed systems, where 2 or even more hard disk are packed closely together it, disks with low temperatures are desirable. The disk working temperature is naturally directly related to the power consumption at various disk operations modes. The comparison below shows that the 120GXP is consuming slightly less power than the 2 other disks.

We took temperatures while de-fragmenting the test partition. Defragging puts the disk under high stress and increases the heat output. We used a probe to take the temperature from 2 spots: the disk processor and the disk steel frame. Not surprisingly the IBM 120GXP temperatures were the lowest among the 3 disks, because it consumes less power. We also found that the Maxtor D740X and the Western Digital 1000JB disk microprocessors are running above 50C under load! This should not be a problem when running these disks alone, but when placing 2 of them close together for RAID operations active cooling is highly advisable.

 
Temperature Testing - click images to enlarge

As far as acoustics are concerned, we can keep this short: none of the tested disks made any unusual or disturbing noise. The IBM 120GXP and the Maxtor D740X have acoustic dumping functions, which can be enabled/disabled through manufacturer provided disk utilities. The drawback is slightly lower performance.

To check the reliability of the tested hard disks we kept Winbench 99 looping for almost 24 hours in RAID 0. The Winbench 99 "High-end Disk" test is permanently accessing the disk. Looping this test for 24 hours puts probably more stress on the disk than it would have to endure in many weeks of normal operations. At the end of our tests we run a complete health check with the manufacturers' propriety test and repair utilities. This included the SMART status and an advanced check of the disk surface for bad sectors. In case of IBM the health test utility also includes a check of mechanical functions. We found no problems.

Conclusion and Recommendations:
We received very consistent results throughout all our tests:

• The IBM 120GXP and the Western Digital 1000JB are performing almost identical and deliver outstanding disk transfer rates and scores in application based benchmarks.
• The Maxtor D740, although clearly better performing than our ATA reference hard disk, is falling behind the 120GXP and the 1000JB.

This said we recommend based on our benchmarks taken with WinBench 99, SANDRA 2002 and Content Creation the following:

Single Disk Use
When used a single hard disk drives the Western Digital 1000 JB and the IBM 120GXP perform basically identical, both far better than the tested competition. Looking at the results in Content Creation 2001 we feel however that a "high-end" user who is regularly working with hard disk intensive applications and huge files is served best with one of the 8 MB cache disks from Western Digital. The D740X, king of the hill just a couple of months ago, has been dethroned and would be only our 3^rd choice.

1^st choice: Western Digital 1000JB
2^nd choice: IBM 120GXP
3^rd choice: Maxtor D740X

Raid 0
Looking at their amazing transfer rates under RAID 0 it's safe to say that both the IBM 120GXP and the Western Digital 1000JB are excellent choices. But the 120GXP is our recommended choice for RAID 0. One reason is the lower power consumption and the lower temperature. This is important when coupling 2 or even more disks for RAID operations. Another reason is the cost: 2 of the aggressively priced IBM 120GXP (40GB) cost less than 1 unit of the Western 1000JB, provide only 20% less storage, but perform when RAIDed clearly faster than a single 1000JB with 100GB. The Maxtor D740X would be again only our third choice. The volatile transfer rate diagram is a reason for concern.

1^st choice: IBM 120GXP
2^nd choice: Western Digital 1000JB
3^rd choice: Maxtor D740X

Final Words:
In the near future Serial ATA disks will gradually replace the existing parallel ATA disks. It has to be seen to which extent serial ATA will provide higher transfer rates than parallel ATA and how this will translate into actual performance. That not withstanding we think that the tested IBM 120GXP and Western Digital 1000JB parallel ATA hard disk drives are an excellent buy with highly competitive performance for some time to come.

Content Creation 2001 shows how much overall system performance is gaining by high-end ATA 100 disks like the Western Digital 1000JB or the IBM 120GXP. Compared with our reference ATA 100 hard disk, it's around 20%! Such a gain is well worth the investment for somebody who is working with demanding applications. And maybe the change from an ATA 66 or older ATA 100 hard disk drive to one of the tested high-end disks from IBM or Western Digital is a better investment than changing the CPU for a few 100 MHz more.