paulphoto's Full Review: Fujitsu MBA3 NC 147 GB SCSI Hard Drive
I made a switch to using SCSI (Small Computer Scalable Interface) hard drives for my workstation system back in 2004. Since then I never looked back to IDE or SATA (I or II). During the early years of my SCSI adventure, I have explored virtually all makes of SCSI hard drives from Western Digital (WD), Quantum, Maxtor, Seagate, Hitachi (IBM) to Fujitsu. Currently, the main actors in SCSI technology are Fujitsu, Hitachi and Seagate.
The Fujitsu MBA3147NC is the fourth generation of Ultra320 interface SCSI hard drive with 15,000 rotational speed (15K RPM) and a transfer rate of 320MB/s. The first Ultra320 15K RPM SCSI from Fujitsu was MAS-series which held a leading record-breaking on fast data transfer rate with smooth and consistent read and write capability. The second (MAU-series) and third (MAX-series) generations were the cutting-edge, but Maxtor Atlas 15K2 and Hitachi Ultrastar 15K were also fast and quite competitive to the MAU or the MAX (based on my benchmark, of course). Now, the MBA-series has the ability to change all that...
The Fujitsu MBA3147NC has a storage capacity of 147GB. This series consists of three members designated by the storage capacity: 73.5GB, 147GB and 300GB. The 73.5GB is the smallest member featuring a single double-sided platter (73.5GB/platter) with two read/write heads. The second member (147GB) uses two platters with four read/write heads, while the third utilizes four platters doubling the read/write heads to 8 to boost its monstrous storage capacity of 300GB.
Compared to SATA-I or II hard drives with a hopping storage capacity of 1,500GB (1.5TG), the SCSI's 300GB is a considerable leap of technology, considering its ultra-fast 15,000RPM compared to the 7200RPM of the desktop SATA-I or SATA-II. Needless to mention, SCSI storage device is currently available in 450GB as well. The key to SCSI is speed, among other superior features to IDE/SATA. For instance, the MBA3147NC has a seek time of 2ms with an internal data transfer rate of 179MB/s and external of 320MB/s. To achieve its smooth, responsive and quiet operation, the Fujitsu MBA-series uses fluid dynamic bearing motors in all of its three members. This translates to superb performance and reliability, while maintaining low heat and operation noise.
FUJITSU MBA3147NC specifications
Model: MBA3147NC Type: SCIS-Ultra320, 80-pin Capacity: 146.9GB Form Factor: 3.5-inch x 1-inch Access Time: 2 ms Cache: 8MB Rotational Speed: 15000RPM
The Fujitsu MBA3147NC carries a 5-year warranty. This includes parts and labor.
Availability
With regards to interface availability, the Fujitsu MBA-series is quite impressive. Clearly Fujitsu made sure the device is available to every medium in the computing community. One could easily identify the interface of the device by reading the last two character-code on the model number, which is as follows:
As noted above, I am reviewing the 80-pin edition. Compared to the 68-pin, the 80-pin is quite unique which offers an added flexibility: hot-swappable. It can be hooked up among other 68-pin devices via a 80-to-68 pin Ultra320 adaptor. Its 80-pin interface is appropriate in a number of applications ranging from a personal desktop to a workstation. However, the use of 68-pin yields a low-cost effectiveness in terms of connections, but it does not offer hot-swap capability, and because it uses the 4-pin molex power connector, the pin could be easily broken off during disconnecting process (if not being careful -- I have done it in the past).
The Fujitsu MBA3147NC features the current technology of ultra-fast data transfer rate of up to 320 MB/s using the Ultra320 SCSI data cable when the device is connected to a SCSI adaptor supporting Ultra320 data rate, yet the device is backwards compatible with Ultra160, Ultra2 (80) and UltraSCSI.
Despite the growing SATA technology and its affordability, SCSI is still considered superior in many respects. Among them, in addition to speed, is scalability of disk management. The use of SCSI is via a PCI-X (or legacy PCI) controller card that supports up to 15 devices per channel operating at full bandwidth of 133MHz/64-bit compared to the standard IDE operating at 33MHz/32-bit. Imagine how fast and how much data (bit stream) can travel through a 133MHz compared to a 33MHz.
For IDE (or P-ATA), at most two devices can be connected to a single port (compared to 15 offerd by SCSI). When SATA came out in 2002, motherboards that supported them had two SATA ports; then four, six; and now eight ports may be found on most top-of-the-line motherboards, but half of them are reserved for RAID, which cannot be used as normal IDE devices. Thus, SCSI controller can support far more storage devices; and for controller that supports dual-channel, the amount of storage devices will double. In contrast to IDE devices that are connected as master/slave, SCSI devices connected in the chain do not interfere with each other when transitting or receiving data; hence, it is scalable.
Frankly, SCSI installation is no different than that of IDE (P-ATA), except the fact that each device must have a unique ID number. The manufacturer's installation guide illustrates from physically installing the device in the system, setting the right jumper pin to partitioning and formatting the drive.
I use the Fujitsu MBA3147NC as a system drive for Windows XP Pro (32bit) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (64bit). Thus, I had to make all the necessary preparation from configuring the partitions to installing the software. I used the Ultra320 80-to-68 pin adaptor to connect the MBA3147NC among my other SCSI drives. I configured it to ID0. As usual, I booted the system in Linux, then used the fdisk utility to configure the partitions. I configured three primary partitions and two logical partitions. The first and the second primary were reserved for Linux boot (125MB) and swap (2048MB) partitions; the third primary partition (42GB) was used for Windows XP; the first logical partition (45GB) was used for Linux root partition and the last partition (50GB) for temporay data storage.
Hardware/System Configuration: My entire system consists of the following configuration
Motherboard/CPU: Tyan S2885 with Dual-Core Opteron 265 Storage SCSI: Total five SCSI hard drives, all controlled by LSI Logic21320 PCI-X 133MHz/64bit SCSI controller (dual-channel) MBA3147NC (147GB) 15K RPM as Operating Systems 2xMAS3367NP 15K RPM as RAID0 (72GB) as temproary work partition (video/photo) MAW3300NP (300GB) 10K RPM as data storage MAX3036NP (36GB) 15K RPM for audio file storage
Benchmarks
I really enjoy using SCSI devices for their responsiveness and their overall performance in sheer speed and reliability. My SCSI devices are predominantly from Fujitsu; but I also use Seagate Cheetah as well as Maxtor and Hitachi. Therefore, I often compare performance by using benchmark results tested from each device. For benchmarking, I use a number of software including HD Tach, SiSoft Sandra, WinBench and DriveMark. I am interested in seeing which make of SCSI devices yield a better overall performance which is provided in terms of figures. Below is the benchmark score I obtained from HD Tach and SiSoft Sandra running under Windows XP SP-2. HD Tach (long zone analysis) using LSI21320 PCI-X 64-bit/133MHz SCSI controller on Tyan Thunder S2885ANRF motherboard Burst Rate: 231.2MB/s (higher is better) Sequential Read: - Outer Zone: 125 MB/s - Inner Zone: 70MB/s Ave Read: 102.3 MB/s CPU Time: 1 % Access Time: 7.3 ms (lower is better) SiSoft Sandra XI 2007 using LSI21320 PCI-X 64-bit/133MHz SCSI controller on Tyan Thunder S2885ANRF motherboard Ave Read: 153 MB/s Ave Write: 95 MB/s Access Time: 3 ms (lower is better)
SiSoftSandra gave a Drive Index of 106MB/s with a Buffered Read of 252MB/s, Sequential Read of 119MB/s and Random Read of 88Mb/s, yielding an average of 153MB/s reported above. The average write was calculated from the Buffered Write of 88MB/s, Sequential Write of 117Mb/s and Random Write of 87MB/s to be 95MB/s.
According HD Tach benchmark, a burst rate of 231.2MB/s for an Ultra320 data rate is very good but not surprisingly good when compared to my other SCSI drives in the chain as noted in the Hardware list above. However, its average read of 102.3MB/s from HD Tach and Drive Index of 106MB/s from SiSoft Sandra put the Fujitsu MBA3147NC at the top of all the fastest 15K RPM hard drives in my possession (Seagate Cheetah 15K5, Maxtor Atlas 15K2 and Hitach Ultrastar 15K). HD Tach's sequential read graph the Fujitsu MBA3147NC showed a rough curve with fluctuating spikes from 0GB at 125MB/s to 70MB/s towards 147GB zone; the curve is not quite smooth indicating a storage rate fluctuation, but other 15K RPM SCSI drives, such as Seagate 15K5, Maxtor Atlas 15K2 and Hitachi 15K showed this same trend too.
Based on my SiSoft Sandra benchmark, the Fujitsu MBA3147NC is even faster than the current Seagate Cheetah 15k5 73.5GB SCSI/SAS drive I currently use for my newly built workstation system. I will discuss the benchmark result from the Cheetah 15K5 in a separate review, except to mention that the Fujitsu MBA3147NC is faster than Seagate Cheetah 15K5 by a wide margin.
Usage and General Performance
Windows XP Pro (32bit) was quite responsive. Under Linux 64bit, the overall responsiveness was screaming fast, a noted increased in speed was mainly and obviously due to this fast SCSI hard drive, compared to the Maxtor Atlas 15K2 (73.5GB) and Fujitsu MAX3073NC (73.5GB) I used before it. I recently upgraded my system to a pair of dual-core Opteron 880 (2.4GHz) and was amazed at how quick and responsive the overall performance of my workstation system powered by the Fujitsu MBA3147NC. My Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 video editor handles video rendering at phenomenal speed. Adobe Photoshop CS3 is also responsive, very quick at loading a 40-45MB TIFF format image files. Everything is just extremely fast, period. The overall responsiveness of the system made computing much more enjoyable and productive.
Like all Fujitsu SCSI hard drives which I have used, the MBA3147NC (compared to Seagate Cheetah 15K5) is quiet during accessing, reading and writing, even during spin-up. During defragmenting, it only put out a low pitch sound. Compared to SATA hard drives, the MBA3147NC is loud, indeed understandably due to the fast 15K RPM speed. With regards to heat, this device definitely needs to be kept at constant cooling. It will get warm during operation. Hence, I have positioned the device with a small 92mm fan blowing air directly on it to help reduce heat; and it was kept at a cool temperature.
PCI/PCI-X Controller Compatibility & Warranty With regards to SCSI controller compatibility, the Fujitsu MBA3147NC was tested with LSI Logic 21320, onboard LSI Logic 53C1030 (on Tyan S2895U motherboard) as well as LSI Logic 22320-R and all were compatible without a single problem. No doubt, it should also be backward compatible with slower SCSI controller, such as Ultra160.
I bought the Fujitsu MBA3147NC off eBay in new condition, although it was already registered to the previous owner. For that, warranty is voided, and nontransferable. The drive has a manufactured date of June 2008. Thus, this drive should have 4 more years left of warranty. My experience with Fujitsu SCSI hard drives has always been very positive. I have used vertually all series of Fujitsu SCSI drives. These were MAN-series (Ultra160, 10K RPM), MAM-series (Ultra160, 15K RPM), MAP-series (Ultra320, 10K RPM), MAS-series (Ultra320, 15K RPM), MAT-series (Ultra320, 10K RPM), MAW-series (Ultra320, 10K RPM), MAU-series (Ultra320, 15K RPM), MAX-series (Ultra320, 15K RPM).
From this list, I still use MAS3367NP (36.7GB) drives configured as RAID0, for the last four years. I have been using the MAP3147NP for the last three years, and it was bought used from eBay (which appeared to be heavily used); and it is still the most reliable hard drive I have used compared to other SCSI drives that failed on me unexpectedly. To sum up, I have found Fujitsu SCSI hard drives extremely dependable and reliable.
Conclusion & Final Thoughts
The Fujitsu MBA3147NC is an superb SCSI hard drive, currently the fastest 15K RPM SCSI hard drive (compared to Seagate Cheetah 15K5 SAS). The benchmark score from HD tach and SiSoft Sandra indicated the Fujitsu MBA-series leaving the rest behind in terms of speed, at least for a single-user workstation; I cannot confirm this a multi-user server. Thus, from a workstation stand point, Fujitsu has once again proved that the company can develop record-breaking 15K RPM SCSI hard drive.
My decision for using it as a device to house two operating systems (Windows XP and Linux) has proven not quite practical, since I still have about 50GB of disk space left. Personally, I like to designate a single drive solely for the operating system to ensure optimum performance and responsiveness. Since Windows XP Pro (unlike Vista) does not require a large disk space, I think a 73.5GB would do a better job for me. Previously, I have used the Fujitsu MAX3073NC to hold dual-boot with Windows XP Pro and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 with great flexibility and excellent setup. Now, if the device is used for Windows Vista as dual-boot, it may prove practical for a 147GB. However, if you are considering using the Fujitsu MBA-series for an operating system, I would recommend using the 73.5GB version. In the future, if I get a hold of the 73.5GB, I will definitely use the 147GB as storage device instead.
In terms of price, yes, the SCSI hard drives are still very expensive. But, we are not talking about a standard desktop PC here; we are talking about a workstation for power users. Therefore, for a workstation system that demands storage device with high-speed throughput on read/write access, nothing can beat the Fujitsu MBA-series; I highly recommend it.
Fujitsu's latest generation 15K RPM Enterprise Hard Disk Drives (MBA Series) continue to represent some of the fastest enterprise 3.5-inch hard disk d...More at Dell SMB
Fujistu's 3.5" 15K enterprise hard drive can hold up to 147GB of data, while it's 4-platter configuration provides low power consumption, high reliabi...More at PC Connection
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.