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"BARE
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"BARE
Facts
On Macintosh Speed FEATS"
"Wee
Wiebetech" Portable FireWire/USB2 Drive Challenges
The Fastest Competitors. By Rob-ART Morgan Wiebetech
has an exciting new anodized aluminum 2.5 inch
portable drive with two FireWire ports and one USB
2.0 port. It's called the MicroGB.
In early testing, it exhibited impressive
performance so I decided to pit it against the
fastest portable drives tested this
year. FASTEST
PORTABLE FIREWIRE DRIVE? The
MicroGB (FireWire mode) was fastest in 3 out of 6
tests (and second fastest in 2 others) so Wiebetech
wins bragging rights. Its anodized aluminum case is
both attractive and rugged. It
appears to contain the same drive as the SmartDisk
FireLite, which was fastest in 2 tests and second
fastest in all the others. What's
most amazing is that both the MicroGB and FireLite
had 4200rpm drives, yet ran faster than the "Clear
911" with the 5400rpm Travelstar 48GB (48GH) and
60GB IBM Travelstar 60GH.
Makes you wonder what the 5400 drives would do in
the MicroGB. As a matter of fact, Wiebetech makes a
version of the MicroGB that uses the 48GH so stay
tuned for an update of this page with those
results. I
didn't include the FWDepot.com "Cutie" in the
graphs even though it can handle the same
Toshiba
40GB MK4018GAP
drive that was in the MicroGB and FireLite... I
just didn't have one to stick in it. (And the 48GH
and 60GH won't fit.) If I get my hands on a Toshiba
or the 40GB IBM Travelstar 40GN,
I'll try it in the "Cutie." USB
2.0 VERSUS FIREWIRE As
I noted in the test
of the Wiebetech Desktop
GB
(3.5 inch drive), FireWire is much faster than USB
2.0. With these smaller 2.5 inch portables, the gap
between FireWire and USB 2.0 speed is much
smaller. (Note:
USB 2.0 requires OSX and a USB 2.0 PCI or PCMCIA
card with USB 2.0 drivers.) Even
if USB 2.0 ran at the same speed as FireWire, it
has three strikes against it: SPECIFICATIONS Weight
with test drive Thickness Length Width Storage
Capacity as tested Maximum
Capacity Drive that fits Price
as tested *The
$290 price includes the $115
case from
FWDepot.com
and the $175
40GB Toshiba MK4018GAP at
Googlegear.
Or save a few more bucks by ordering the 40GB IBM
Travelstar for $157
at GoogleGear. **
The $393 price includes the $115
"Clear 911" case from
TransIntl.com
and the $278
IBM Travelstar 48GH drive from
GoogleGear.com. TEST
NOTES (The
MicroGB's USB 2.0 tests were run on a Dual
G4/800, since that interface requires OS X and
the Orange Micro USB 2.0 PCI
card.) TEST
DRIVES: WHERE TO ORDER YOUR APPLE PRODUCTS © 1995-2007 Rob Art Morgan
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1. You can't boot from USB 2.0 drives
2. You have to run it with an A/C adapter as there
isn't enough bus power to run even portable
versions.
3. USB devices have to share the bandwidth and
slower devices pull down the speed of faster
ones.
MicroGB
FireLite
Cutie
Clear 911
(262 grams)
(192 grams)
(189 grams)
(312 grams)
(22 mm)
(18 mm)
(16 mm)
(27 mm)
(143 mm)
(130 mm)
(127 mm)
(140 mm)
(75 mm)
(80 mm)
(75 mm)
(89 mm)
and
60 GB
or
Toshiba
40GB MK4018GAP
or
Toshiba
40GB MK4018GAP
(A/C adapter not included)
The
test "mule" was an Apple
Titanium G4 PowerBook (667MHz) with disk cache
set to 512K (to diminish effect of system
caching), AppleTalk OFF, Virtual Memory OFF, and
Extensions set to minimal (BASE).
(*The Clear 911 case is also available from
FWDepot.com
(eDrive 911) and Other
World
Computing.)
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