Disk Performance:

The SATA read tests were conducted using HD Tach 3.0.1.0's 8MB zone test. The USB 2.0 and Firewire tests were done using a SimpleTech SimpleDrive External 250GB hard drive using the same 8MB zone test. We recorded the average read speeds in all cases.



The RAID-0 of the ICH9R Intel Matrix RAID array may not perform outright as fast in synthetic tests as the Nvidia RAID, however the 128kb stripe size seems to have worked exceptionally well in real world tests on the next few pages.



Both Firewire and USB performance are very close, with both Firewire results actually lower than we'd expect. A "normal" value of about 35MB/s is the general capable throughput of the drive.