Promise Technology, FastTrak Review

Date: 10th February 98 by Audio

- The Good - The Bad - Test System Configuration - Conclusion - Rating - Other   reviews

When I first heard of Promise Technology, I was looking for a fast SCSI hard disk for non-linear video editing. Being an IDE RAID system, it supposed to offer a good cost effective alternative to SCSI. Though I managed to do some research into the product, it didn’t quite appeal to me for the following reasons: - Though the concept is very good, I cannot determine just how much this solution would fare in comparison to an Ultrawide SCSI system. The start-up cost is 2 times the price of a decent size hard disk plus the cost of the card. This could turn out to be higher than an Ultra-wide SCSI equivalent if you intended to buy good quality hard disks to build up your system. In order to get a good significant saving over the SCSI option, you may have to get lower capacity drives, which would limit your future hard disk capacity expansion. The manufacturer advises that all drives should be of the same model and size. Hence, It is advisable to start out with all 4 drives as opposed to starting up with two (minimum configuration) as there would likely to be a problem getting identical drives in the future. I ended up with the safer option, the 10,000-rpm IBM 9.1G ZX UW SCSI drive, though I was pretty curious about how an IDE RAID system would perform. So, when Hardware Zone coincidentally assigned me to do this review, you’ll know why I accepted it so readily.

 

FastTRAK Specifications
Bus Type	PCI
Drive Types Supported	Ultra ATA/EIDE Fast ATA-2
No. of Drives Supported	4 (minimum 2 required)
Data Transfer Speed	Up to 25MB/s
32-bit DMA Bus Master Support	Yes.
RAID Level Support	Supports RAID Level 0 (striping), 1(mirroring), and 0/1 (striping/ mirroring)
FastBuild Bios Utility	Provides auto configuration and optimization

The Theory

The Fastrack system supports the following modes: -

Stripping (RAID 0)

 

Double access speed and double drive capacity are achieved by RAID 0, as all data blocks are stored in parallel onto both drives.

Mirroring (RAID 1)

For RAID 1, the data are actually mirrored in both drives, providing redundancy. When one drive failed, the data will be taken from the other drive. On subsequent bootup, Fastrack will warn you of your faulty drive. If a "spare" drive is connected, in the event of a failed drive, a new mirror will be built in this "spare" drive transparently.

Striping / Mirror (RAID 0/1)

This is a combination of both Striping and Mirror modes, possible only with 4-drive configuration.

Spanning (Different Size Drives)

This allow you to use different size drives and all data are stored into one drive until it is full and then the next drive will be use. This mode does not offer any speed improvement nor mirror functions.

Mode Summary Table

Mode	Read / Write Performance	Capacity	No of Drives
Stripping (0)	Best / Best		2 or more
Mirror (1)	High/Normal	50% Min	Even Number
Stripping/Mirror	Best/High	50% Min	4 or 8* (2 Fastrack cards)
Spanning	Normal/Normal		2 or more

The Product

The card comes in quite a pretty pack and like most peripherals, a smaller box could have been used. The package comprised of: -

• Fastrack card
• 2 floppy disks (Drivers and utilities for Win 98, Win 95, Windows NT, OS2 and Netware.)
• 2 IDE cable assemblies with 2 IDE plugs on each lines ( 4 IDE devices)
• Manual
• Warranty Card

(Ahem….neat huh?… but the hard disks and the Y-power power connector are not included in the package…)

Frontal View

Back View

The Installation

Physical installation of the system is quick and easy. The two pieces of IBM 8.4Gb hard drives, that Hardware Zone managed to secure for this review, formed one whole volume of 16.8Gb

However, the software installation is not so straightforward. Among the many problems I encountered that evening were: -

1. The Fastrack bootup screen did not appear when there is a SCSI drive is connected to the system. This was realised after I started to troubleshoot by removing the 68 pin connector of the ultrawide drive and viola!, the Fastrack screen appeared. Immediately, I initialised the drive setup for the Fastrack menu and for the first time that night, I managed to FDISK both drives (using FAT32, of course, what else…)
2. The card did not wish to share IRQ with the other devices. I spent a good part of the night physically relocating all the PCI cards before harmony existed among the cards.
3. Unable to format the drives under the conventional DOS, I was forced to go into Win 98, opened a MS prompt window in order to format the Fastrack drives. The formatting process took me just under 15 minutes.
4. The last step of the installation was to setup Ultra Tune which is an utility for tailoring the characteristics of the card to better suit your usage.

The Tests

The most demanding task, a hard disk can be subjected to, would be video capturing. I will attempt to use the Miro DC30 plus video capture utilities to measure just how fast Fastrack is. The results are rather stunning…note that the both Fastrack's read and write results went ABOVE the vertical scale!

Test results of Fastrack (Drive E:)

Graphic test results of Fastrack (Drive E:)

Test Results of the IBM UW SCSI Drive (Drive D:)

Graphic test results of IBM SCSI (Drive D:)

Test Results of the Quantum Fireball SE 6.4 Gb

Graphic test results of Quantum Fireball SE 6.4G IDE

To put the review through some standardised hard disk test, I used Adaptec Threadmark 2.0 and these are the results: -

ThreadMark Results Monday, January 18, 1999 14:15:57 PM Data Transfer Rate (MB/sec) was 11.67. Average CPU Utilization was 44.72 percent. System Information ------------------ Operating System : Windows 95 Windows version : 4.10 Additional OS information : Total physical memory : 65052 (KB) Page size : 4096 Processor class : Pentium Number of processors : 1   User Supplied Information ------------------------- Fastrack Logical Drives Tested --------------------- E: ThreadMark (TM) Version 2.0

ThreadMark Results Monday, January 18, 1999 13:34:57 PM Data Transfer Rate (MB/sec) was 8.27. Average CPU Utilization was 31.16 percent. System Information ------------------ Operating System : Windows 95 Windows version : 4.10 Additional OS information : Total physical memory : 65052 (KB) Page size : 4096 Processor class : Pentium Number of processors : 1   User Supplied Information ------------------------- IBM 9.1Gbyte Ultra wide SCSI ZX Logical Drives Tested --------------------- D: ThreadMark (TM) Version 2.0

ThreadMark Results Monday, January 18, 1999 20:42:06 PM Data Transfer Rate (MB/sec) was 3.59. Average CPU Utilization was 63.55 percent. System Information ------------------ Operating System : Windows 95 Windows version : 4.10 Additional OS information : Total physical memory : 65052 (KB) Page size : 4096 Processor class : Pentium Number of processors : 1   User Supplied Information ------------------------- Quantum 6.4G IDE (UDMA) Logical Drives Tested --------------------- C: ThreadMark (TM) Version 2.0

Benchmarking can tell one story while using the product can be a different ballgame. I put the Fastrack through the normal usage for the next 3 days; copying files, playing games and of course video capturing. I managed to record a 4 minute music video at the maximum data rate of over 7 megabytes per sec at compression of 2.6, which is extremely demanding. The results are very good, (see below)

(Click on picture to view Enlarged Version)

There was not a single frame dropped throughout the whole capturing process. The red graphic also show that during the more difficult segment of the video, data rate was almost as high as 8 MB per sec!!!! And as expected, playback of the video from Fastrack was perfect, smooth 30 frames per second motion, and just as good as the DVD source.

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Conclusion

Overall Results:

Drives	Price	Read (Miro DC 30+ Utility)		Write (Miro DC 30+ Utility)		ThreadMark 2.0
		Max	Average	Max	Average	Data Rate	CPU usage
Fastrack	$763 (16.8 G)	24000	21037	20571	10714	11.67 MB/sec	44.72 %
IBM UW SCSI	$900 (9.1G)*	18000	16793	16941	14496	8.27 MB/sec	31.16 %
Quantum IDE	$250 (6.4G)	8228	7578	7024	6624	3.59 MB/sec	63.55 %

* SCSI card not included. With SCSI card, price will be $1,200

(All data for Read, Write Utilities and Data Rate should be higher, the better)

(As for Price and CPU usage, the data should be lower, the better)

Look at the table above, the results speak for themselves. All I can say is, it is unfortunate that nobody have come up with this review before I made my decision to buy the SCSI drive. I would recommend the Fastrack for the following reasons: -

• It provides a cheap solution for fast storage for video work.
• It provides a cheap solution for applications that require storage > 30 Gigabytes in one volume.
• It will allow you to continue building up your IDE storage even after all the 4 IDE ports on your motherboard are all used up.

The only draw back is: -

• This card can be difficult to setup especially when you are running out of IRQs on your motherboard.

But once it’s setup, you will realised that you got at hand, a high speed, high capacity storage system that is very hard to beat for it’s asking price. Come to think of it, I am beginning to consider very seriously about writing a cheque rather than returning this card to the originator.

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