scsi, sata1 and sata2 drive tests

[queenidog]

Query #1: I had to upgrade my computer so I bought a couple Sata2 drives to add to my current Sata1 drives. Along the way I borrowed a SCSI controller and 15K Seagate Cheetah drive.
For uncached (default) disk tests, the SATA1 drive showed 12.9 MB/s, SATA2 5.5 MB/s, and the SCSI 4.1 MB/s.
For cached disk tests, the SATA1 drive showed 13.9 MB/s, SATA2 16.2 MB/s, and the SCSI 22.4 MB/s

Why the disproportianate values between uncached VS cached? Why should the SATA1 drive be better uncached than the SCSI uncached.

ONLY the SATA1 drive had data on it, about 60% full. The SATA2 and SCSI were newly formatted. Cluster size made no difference.

Query #2, the passmark for my computer is 761.5.
Mobo: Asus P5B-E
CPU: Intel dual core E6600 2.4 GHz, 4 MB cache
Seagate SATA2 drives ST3250620A
Maxtor SATA1 drive 6L240S0
Seagate Cheetah 15K Ultra320 drive with LSI Logic Ultra320 controller
OCZ DDR2 memory (2GByte) 800 MHz
Asus EN7950GT 512MByte PCI-Express video card.

All performance settings (fonts, colors, etc) were tweaked with Tune Up Utilities 2006. I have all the latest updates to Bios, drivers, XP, etc. The numbers obtained by others in this forum dwarf my results. Yes I know they have RAID and I don't...but still.

Comments from anyone are appreciated.

[passmark]

As these are new drives in a fairly new machine you should get between 40MB/sec and 80MB/sec. Even without RAID.

But if you are using the advanced disk test then you need to look at all the settings and not just the cacheing flag. For example it is easy to get a low score is you do a lot of random seeking.

For a higher score, work on getting the bottom of your disk problem, consider switching to Windows 64bit, get quad core CPUs (or dual dual core CPUs) and then overclock the entire system, after you install RAID.