Fujitsu 18GB Enterprise MAG3182LP Ultra2 SCSI Hard Drive

Fujitsu’s high capacity, high-performance hard drives have been known to drive aficionados for sometime. Unfortunately, they’ve never had a consumer retail presence nor have they had any desire to compete at that level. And since Fujitsu’s drives can only be found in pre-built systems from OEM manufacturers, they typically only get coverage in full system reviews and the occasional user testimonial, otherwise, they’ve been all but invisible to the average consumer. This is a shame for Fujitsu drives really are top performers, as this review of their 18GB Enterprise MAG3182LP review shows in which the Enterprise’s pure ferocity in slapping down top drives from both IBM and Seagate is laid bare.

But don’t fret about not being able to lay your hands on one of these shredders as the online world has made access to OEM targeted drives like these much easier. This is good news as drives like these should never be overlooked by speed junkies and aficionados in the race for hard drive speed and performance.

Architecturally, Fujitsu’s Enterprise drive compares more to IBM’s 18GB Ultrastar 18LZX than to . While all are half-height 3.5 inch 10,000RPM drives, only the Enterprise and the Ultrastar utilize 5 platters and 10 read heads backed by a 2MB buffer. The Cheetah 18LP, on the other hand, uses 6 platters and 12 heads and only has a 1MB buffer.

The Enterprise, built using IBM’s GMR (giant magnetoresistive) head technology, pulls ahead of the pack with regards to areal density though, packing 3.71Gb per square inch of data onto its platters, which may explain its stellar performance comparatively to the other drives. Fujitsu uses a dual-processor design that’s supposed to improve response time in high-load applications, and as far as we can tell, it helps.

Other additional features outlined by Fujitsu like reduced heat and noise appear to work well as the drive did not seem to require any special cooling nor insulation for noise as it runs VERY quiet. This is due to this generation drive’s reduced acoustic levels – and although we get any specifics outside of some hardcore technical analysis, we believe that Fujitsu has included some innovative technology as this drive can easily be used with an open case without nary a peep!

The Benchmarks

Bolded numbers denote best overall score for that specific benchmark.

The Fujitsu Enterprise is certainly not a pretender to the throne. We pushed this drive to the limits and it proved itself worthy in time and time again. Never before have we seen a drive clearly dominate in so many different benchmarks. Under the gun in HD Tach, the Enterprise soared past the others in read scores by 3MB/sec and write scores by 2MB/sec! But straight sequential reads across the platters aren’t everything. As important, if not more, is the random access time – the time it takes to move the head across the platter AND find a random piece of data (as opposed to the seek time that doesn’t actually read data). Random access time denotes how quick the drive is, and the Enterprise is one quick drive as it delivered the fastest times of all the drives in its class (shown above). It also achieved the highest interface burst speeds across the bus and delivered the lowest CPU utilization scores in Windows NT. Curiously though, the CPU utilization for Windows 98 SE was the highest, but not enough to degrade Windows in any way noticeably (nor is it even worth really mentioning).

The other benchmarks shown above are just as important as they show other characteristics along with strengths and weaknesses of the drives while also validating the HD Tach scores. In Intel Iometer, the Enterprise won in every benchmark, clearly showing its superiority in the enterprise world. This drive is made for high-transaction environments like mail servers for its high input/output operations per second performance in conjunction with low I/O response times.

As for real world benchmarks, the Enterprise showed its mettle although it didn’t rule over the Seagate Cheetah 18LX in Windows NT althougyh the scores were close enough to not make any noticeable difference.

WinBench 99 Disk and Transfer Rate Benchmarks
Manufacturer	FUJITSU Enterprise 18GB		IBM Ultrastar 18GB		SEAGATE Cheetah 18GB
WinBench 99 Business/High-End Disk Benchmarks	Win98 FAT32	WinNT NTFS	Win98 FAT32	WinNT NTFS	Win98 FAT32	WinNT NTFS
Business Disk WinMark 99 (MB/sec)	5.3	5.0	5.2	5.0	4.7	4.9
High-End Disk WinMark 99 (MB/sec)	17.3	13.3	16.3	12.7	16.0	11.7
AVS/Express 3.4 (MB/sec)	10.0	17.1	9.3	15.3	9.0	15.1
FrontPage 98 (KB/sec)	60.1	54.4	58.5	48.8	73.1	47.7
MicroStation SE (MB/sec)	16.8	20.2	15.6	21.2	14.7	19.4
Photoshop 4.0 (MB/sec)	11.2	8.9	10.6	7.5	11.2	6.1
Premiere 4.2 (MB/sec)	21.6	12.1	20.3	9.9	18.3	9.5
Sound Forge 4.0 (MB/sec)	26.0	7.9	24.6	9.4	24.0	9.5
Visual C++ (MB/sec)	18.7	13.9	18.1	12.9	17.5	13.1
WinBench 99 Disk/Read Transfer Rate Benchmark
Beginning (MB/sec)	29.2	29.1	27.0	27.2	27.3	27.4
End (MB/sec)	19.9	20.0	15.0	15.1	16.8	17.1
Disk Access Time (ms)	8.6	8.2	9.1	8.7	9.5	9.3
Disk CPU Utilization (%)	3.4	1.2	3.4	1.5	3.3	1.3

* All WinBench 99 benchmarks are run three times with the scores averaged and converted from KB/sec to MB/sec. Bolded numbers denote best overall score.

 

 The domination continued with the Fujitsu Enterprise blowing away both the Ultrastar and Cheetah in almost every category but a scant few. Unbelievably, the Cheetah soared over the Enterprise by 13MB/sec in the FrontPage 98 benchmark – but unless you’re a code freak who lives in this app full-time, it means nothing. A few other scores by the other drives show some slight gains over the Enterprise yet none manage come close to the tongue stomping the Enterprise delivered in the rest. Be it known that the Enterprise takes no prisoners!

 In the WinBench 99 Disk/Read Transfer Rate benchmark, throughputs are tested across the whole platter with drive results showing the rate at the beginning and end sections of the drive. Here, WinBench did nothing more than validate the dominating scores previously determined in other benchmarks.

 

Read/Writes Across The Platter

 If not for the numerous data dips exhibited when charting read speeds (shown in yellow above), the Fujitsu could be said to lord over the others. Sadly though, even with the speed of the drive hovering near the 30MB/sec range most of the time, the data drops (which kept the speeds down in the 26-27MB/sec range) kept it from receiving a higher verdict. 

 

 Even so, the Fujitsu Enterprise MAG3182LP could still almost be partitioned at the full 18GB and read a 20MB/sec video stream without dropping a single frame! What’s also amazing is the high write speed that stays stable around the 19-20MB range for the first 12GB of the drive’s size! 

 

The Conclusion

 

 

DRIVE SPECIFICATIONS
Manufacturer	FUJITSU	IBM	SEAGATE
Drive Name	Enterprise	Ultrastar	Cheetah 18LP
Drive Model	MAG3182LP	18LZX	ST318203LW
Capacity	18GB	18GB	18GB
Interface	Ultra2 SCSI LVD	Ultra2 SCSI LVD	Ultra2 SCSI LVD
Form factor/Weight (inch/kg)	3.5-inch	3.5-inch	3.5-inch
Weight (pnds)	1.54	1.54	1.5
Buffer size (GB)	2GB	2GB	1MB
Number of discs/heads	5/10	5/10	6/12
Gigabytes per platter (GB)	3.6	3.67	3.03
Areal density (Gbits/square inch)	3.71	3.5	3.17
Rotational (spindle) speed (RPM)	10,025RPM	10,000RPM	10,016RPM
Advertised average read seek time (ms)	5.2	4.9	5.2
Advertised average latency (ms)	5.2	4.9	3.0

 Hands down, the Fujitsu 18GB Enterprise MAG3182LP is tops in its class. Its domination in almost every benchmark, especially the real-world benchmarks, shows Fujitsu is doing something right with its dual-processor design. However, as shown in the throughput chart, it still needs to be stabilized before it can be considered the end-all-be-all Ultra2 SCSI hard drive. This drive is by far the quietest and coolest of all the drives tested in the roundup – which leaves us a bit confused why the drive exhibited the data drops on the throughput chart. Regardless, when factoring in the raw performance of the drive, it still outperforms the others, which is the reason why you just can’t find a better 18GB hard drive in its class.

 While Fujitsu’s drives aren’t as readily available as others, you can see why the time spent tracking them down is time spent well. It’ll be interesting to see how Fujitsu’s Ultra160 SCSI offering will perform…

Verdict:			95%
PCEXTREMIST.COM Editor’s Choice
	The Good:		The Bad:
	Fastest overall drive in almost every benchmark		Data read/write drops across platter
	Stable, well-constructed drive
	Coolest and quietest of all the drives tested
Price: $600 Company: Fujitsu Phone: (800) 626-4682 Company URL: www.fujitsu.com Drive URL: Fujitsu 18GB Enterprise MAG3182LP

* All WinBench 99 benchmarks are run three times with the scores averaged and converted from KB/sec to MB/sec. Bolded numbers denote best overall score.

The domination continued with the Fujitsu Enterprise blowing away both the Ultrastar and Cheetah in almost every category but a scant few. Unbelievably, the Cheetah soared over the Enterprise by 13MB/sec in the FrontPage 98 benchmark – but unless you’re a code freak who lives in this app full-time, it means nothing. A few other scores by the other drives show some slight gains over the Enterprise yet none manage come close to the tongue stomping the Enterprise delivered in the rest. Be it known that the Enterprise takes no prisoners!

In the WinBench 99 Disk/Read Transfer Rate benchmark, throughputs are tested across the whole platter with drive results showing the rate at the beginning and end sections of the drive. Here, WinBench did nothing more than validate the dominating scores previously determined in other benchmarks.

Read/Writes Across The Platter

If not for the numerous data dips exhibited when charting read speeds (shown in yellow above), the Fujitsu could be said to lord over the others. Sadly though, even with the speed of the drive hovering near the 30MB/sec range most of the time, the data drops (which kept the speeds down in the 26-27MB/sec range) kept it from receiving a higher verdict.

Even so, the Fujitsu Enterprise MAG3182LP could still almost be partitioned at the full 18GB and read a 20MB/sec video stream without dropping a single frame! What’s also amazing is the high write speed that stays stable around the 19-20MB range for the first 12GB of the drive’s size!

The Conclusion

DRIVE SPECIFICATIONS
Manufacturer FUJITSU IBM SEAGATE
Drive Name Enterprise Ultrastar Cheetah 18LP
Drive Model MAG3182LP 18LZX ST318203LW
Capacity 18GB 18GB 18GB
Interface Ultra2 SCSI LVD Ultra2 SCSI LVD Ultra2 SCSI LVD
Form factor/Weight (inch/kg) 3.5-inch 3.5-inch 3.5-inch
Weight (pnds) 1.54 1.54 1.5
Buffer size (GB) 2GB 2GB 1MB
Number of discs/heads 5/10 5/10 6/12
Gigabytes per platter (GB) 3.6 3.67 3.03
Areal density (Gbits/square inch) 3.71 3.5 3.17
Rotational (spindle) speed (RPM) 10,025RPM 10,000RPM 10,016RPM
Advertised average read seek time (ms) 5.2 4.9 5.2
Advertised average latency (ms) 5.2 4.9 3.0

Hands down, the Fujitsu 18GB Enterprise MAG3182LP is tops in its class. Its domination in almost every benchmark, especially the real-world benchmarks, shows Fujitsu is doing something right with its dual-processor design. However, as shown in the throughput chart, it still needs to be stabilized before it can be considered the end-all-be-all Ultra2 SCSI hard drive. This drive is by far the quietest and coolest of all the drives tested in the roundup – which leaves us a bit confused why the drive exhibited the data drops on the throughput chart. Regardless, when factoring in the raw performance of the drive, it still outperforms the others, which is the reason why you just can’t find a better 18GB hard drive in its class.

While Fujitsu’s drives aren’t as readily available as others, you can see why the time spent tracking them down is time spent well. It’ll be interesting to see how Fujitsu’s Ultra160 SCSI offering will perform…

-Sean

Verdict: 95%
PCEXTREMIST.COM Editor’s Choice

The Good: The Bad:

Fastest overall drive in almost every benchmark Data read/write drops across platter
Stable, well-constructed drive
Coolest and quietest of all the drives tested

Price: $600
Company: Fujitsu
Phone: (800) 626-4682
Company URL: www.fujitsu.com
Drive URL: Fujitsu 18GB Enterprise MAG3182LP