maybe OT but help with firewire 800 box/card

[rotuts]

ive accumulated a number of external ATA drives that I exchange with a firewire 400 box external to keep my growing video collection from my alchemy and DIVCO cards.

I don't recall what ATA they are but maybe 100's

on my G4Dual if I get a firewire 800 card and a firewire 800 box will it read these drives faster or is that max speed limited by what ATA the drives are, ie 100, 133 etc

thanks even if maybe alittle OT but very knowledgable group here!

rotuts

[rumplestiltskin]

The drives are slower than any firewire bridgeboard (even FW800). So the answer is that FW800 would be a waste of money for you.

Theoretically, FW400 is 400mbps whereas an ATA/133 drive is, theoretically, 133mbps. The math is clear.

[rotuts]

Great Rum

thats exactly what I thought but didn't know the drives max speed. then again what does one put in a 800 box? are there drives that fast?

are there drives even that are fast in a 400 box?

I do have a usb 2 box and the 400 box is faster than the usb 2 box with the same drive!

thanks rotuts

[rumplestiltskin]

At this point there are no drives that require FW800 in order to work properly. However, there are a few enclosures out there that will do a hardware RAID 0 using four drives (and they must be -identical- drives!). When they're "striped" in this manner, it speeds up the drives (as one writes while another moves its heads to the proper location for the next write, etc.). It is theoretically possible to improve the speed to the point where FW400 might be flooded; however, consider the motherboard bus speed and you'll see that this becomes the new bottleneck.

There are no drives fast enough to saturate a FW800 bus. Right now the only drives that might approach that speed will be from UW-SCSI (10K rpm and high$$$) in a RAID. Of course, no FW available for that config.

FW800 is marketing only at this moment but it will happen.

[rumplestiltskin]

USB2's overhead is greater than FW400 hence USB2's lower real-world speed. Not a big difference but it's there.

[rotuts]

Rum

thanks for all the input. my goal is to make all these drives as fast as possible both for my G4dual and a G5 ill be able to get this Jan.

Ive found these sites:

http://www.barefeats.com/hard31.html

http://www.barefeats.com/hard30b.html

but they are difficult for me to understand in real world eveyday stuff:
do these tests imply that ATA/133 or even 100 drives in an Weibetech SATA dock that allows ATA drives to be connected will be faster for me both with my G4dual and a new G5?

sorry to take up so much of your time. the USB2 is very noticbly slower that my FW400 box.

Cheers and thanks

rotuts

[rumplestiltskin]

They don't compare striped FW400 to the striped FW800. There's no real world difference. ATA/100 and ATA/133 are PATA (parallel) as opposed to SATA (serial). The drives used for both are identical; only the controller on the drive is different and, until SATA advances another generation or two, you won't see any real difference in performance.

If you want the best performance, install a SATA card in your G5 and add two or more SATA drives (besides the two at the top of the unit). There is a company that makes a plexiglas assembly that mounts in front of the lower fan assembly. I don't remember their name but a Googles search will find it for you. Then connect -identical- SATA drives (I must stress this - they must be identical drives!) and RAID 0 them all together. Apple's Disk Utility will do this but, if you buy a SATA card that has hardware RAID (on a chip), you will get even better performance.

There are also SATA enclosures (SATA drives to FW800 port). check out cooldrives.com. They have lots of interesting stuff. I've bought their two-bay and four-bay "sled"-type towers and have been very happy with them (large backup usage, multiple drives and multiple grandfathered).

The point of this all is that RAID 0 in a FW400 enclosure will do more for you than FW800 without RAID. FW800 with RAID should give you the same performance as FW400 simply because the drives are too slow to saturate the bus!

The weakest link is the drives. Don't worry about buying something now with the intention of keeping it for the next 10 years. This is a quickly moving target and we're probably about a year or so from seeing any dramatic improvements in drives that will provide any substantive results when comparing FW400 and FW800.

Rum

thanks for all the input. my goal is to make all these drives as fast as possible both for my G4dual and a G5 ill be able to get this Jan.

Ive found these sites:

http://www.barefeats.com/hard31.html

http://www.barefeats.com/hard30b.html

but they are difficult for me to understand in real world eveyday stuff:
do these tests imply that ATA/133 or even 100 drives in an Weibetech SATA dock that allows ATA drives to be connected will be faster for me both with my G4dual and a new G5?

sorry to take up so much of your time. the USB2 is very noticbly slower that my FW400 box.

Cheers and thanks

rotuts

[rotuts]

rump

thanks for so much info. Ill stick to my 400 enclosure and my G4 and then re evaluate things this Jan when I get one of the new G5's Ive seen the add on boxes you mention, for the yesterdays g5

I saw pictures of the new dual core g5s and they may have the RAM in the slot that one of the makers has for the add on 3 SATA drive bay.

but again thanks for your time and interesting input

(I knew Id get good input from this forum!!!!)

rotut

[rumplestiltskin]

If you're considering the new dual-core G5, I'd advise waiting to read the reviews comparing them to the previous generation. I have one of the dual-2.0 G5's and it will be interesting to see how two separate CPUs compare to one dual-core CPU. I'm sure the top of the line dual-CPU / dual-core unit is awesome, however.

Glad to have helped.

[rotuts]

good tip rump.

i am planing on a dual dual in jan. I want to wait and make sure there are no funny noises, leaky hoses etc and then will jump in.

I can't wait. I do a lot of movie like work for fun and on my dual G4 I have to do all the stuff one at a time.

do you know this site?:

http://www.hardmac.com/

it gave me this yest:

http://media.99mac.se/g5_dualcore/

those sweeeds must have had one up there sleeeeves.

for entertainment go to the same site without the /g5....... in the URL
apparently the Sweeeeeds think beer and macs are pretty much the same thing.

can't wait to see what readers think of the dual dual

Ive decided to avoid intel for now.

rotuts

[rumplestiltskin]

rotuts,

Interesting links; thanks. When you're ready to order, check out expercom.com; they often have deals with AppleCare included that are usually pretty good. No tax and "1 cent" shipping, too. I've bought quite a number of machines from them over the last few years and have always been a satisfied customer.

Apple replaced my dual 1.25 G4 last year when it died under AppleCare. They sent me a dual-1.8 G5. 11 months later (about a month ago), that unit died and they couldn't find a power supply for it! So they replaced -it- with a dual 2.0 G5. Just a good example of why AppleCare is an essential accessory.

Good luck!

[rotuts]

rumps

what great tips. I will get applecare then, I never have for a machine but understand its de rigour for monitors. but I ahve my dual monitors now samsung as they have a no dead pixel guarantee and at the time were 100 cheaper than apple and had a 100 back coupon each.

but Ive had them for a year and everyting is much cheaper now.

best stategry on computer is invest your computer money and wait until you are dead to get your set up.

I forgot to tell you I suffer from being eligible for the Univ discount and I geet it sent to NH free and pay no tax.

sorry that comes to 3k for the dual dual. I get the add ons elsewhere: chips even the DVD dual is cheaper to buy for $50 and get the CD if its offered and give that away.

its going to be forever to Jan

rotutw

[live4ever]

The drives are slower than any firewire bridgeboard (even FW800). So the answer is that FW800 would be a waste of money for you.

Theoretically, FW400 is 400mbps whereas an ATA/133 drive is, theoretically, 133mbps. The math is clear.

This should be:
FW400 = approx. 50 megabytes/second
FW800 = approx. 100 megabytes/second
ATA-133 = approx. 133 megabytes/second

[rumplestiltskin]

The drives are slower than any firewire bridgeboard (even FW800). So the answer is that FW800 would be a waste of money for you.

Theoretically, FW400 is 400mbps whereas an ATA/133 drive is, theoretically, 133mbps. The math is clear.

This should be:
FW400 = approx. 50 megabytes/second
FW800 = approx. 100 megabytes/second
ATA-133 = approx. 133 megabytes/second

Oops. I stand corrected re: ATA-133 spec. Note that FW400 is 400mbps/8=50MBps (theoretically, before subtracting the overhead).

However, the 133MB/sec spec is, frankly, bulls**t marketing. At that spec, copying from HD>HD should take about 7.5 seconds for 1GB. Try it. I just did (using SATA-150 drives) and came up with 40 seconds. That's about 25MB/sec. I did a duplicate of a 1GB file to the same HD and it took 25 seconds (40MB/sec). This is why FW800 has no appreciable advantage over FW400. The hard drives in use today are too darn slow. Give it a year or so and things will be better.

[rotuts]

Rumps

what firewire box did you use? I take it you are convinced that a firewire 800 box and card for my G4 really won' help me. some of the drives may even be ata-100's, I don't recall nor do I know how to check this. it doesn't say on the drives themselves.

Id hope to get a card for $50 and a box for $50 to speed up things.

when I get my G5 how do I connect up the computers to use the HD on the G4 at the fasted transfer rate? use the etherport?

thats a whole other question but youd probably know. again thats not unter Jan unless I have a momenbt of great weakness after user reviews come out.

thanks rotuts

[RatVega]

Here's what I know about the whole FW thing:

FW400 is plenty fast for DV.

FW800 is twice as fast, but too slow for most HD.

Virtually all FW drives use the same ATA100/133 drives, the majority of which have a max data out rate of around 30MB/sec. Clearly, making a FW400 RAID will get you a larger working space, but very little additional speed.

A FW800 RAID will run out of bandwidth at 2 or 3 drives. Do the math, but knock off 30% or so to get real world numbers.

If you want a really fast, inexpensive RAID, go SATA. I have about $1100 in mine and it benchmarks over 350MB/sec (real world sustained transfers are over 150MB/sec).

If you have a lot of drives you want to make FW compatible, find an affordable "hot swap" system. I'm using five hot swap boxes and over 30 drives in inexpensive plastic "sleds" that slide into them. My current cost of expansion is around 50¢/GByte.

Hope this sheds some light...