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Originally
posted 10/21/02 by rob-ART
morgan, TWO NEW
CHALLENGES FACE FIREWIRE DRIVE
MAKERS: CHALLENGE #1:
To develop a FireWire case kit that can handle
the new 180GB and 200GB drives. Up until the
day this article was posted, there were no FireWire
cases shipping that would support the new ATA-6
standard needed to support these drives. A few
companies hacked the ATA-5 firmware to work with
the Maxtor D540X 160GB 5400 rpm drive, but to
support ATA-6 required Oxford to change their
firmware and for the makers of FireWire case kits
to change the bridgeboard circuits. CHALLENGE #2:
To develop a FireWire case kit that will enable
180+GB 7200 rpm 3.5 inch drives to run off of bus
power on Macs with BUILT-IN FireWire ports. Up
until recently, only a 2.5 inch drive could run off
of bus power. I can announce
today that WiebeTech
is
the first company overcome those two challenges...
simultaneously! (Read their
white paper on ATA-6
support
for 137GB+ drives.) Wiebetech is NOW
shipping three ATA-6 FireWire solutions: Super
DesktopGB, Super DriveDock, and regular FireWire
DriveDock. All three support the new, fast, high
capacity 180+ GB ATA-133 drives such as the IBM
Deskstar 180GXP, the Western Digital WD1800BB/JB or
WD2000BB/JB, and the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus
9. And the Super
DriveDock and Super DesktopGB support those
"monster" drives with nothing but FireWire bus
power. Batteries not included or needed. No cords.
No transformer bricks. Nada. WHAT'S THE BIG
DEAL WITH BUS POWER? Many Titanium G4
PowerBook owners have written me that they like the
bus powered 2.5 inch drives but they aren't fast
enough (about 20MB/s) and/or don't store enough
(60GB max). They can use the 3.5 inch drive
solutions but they are often bulky and require A/C
power. Even owners of iMacs and G4 Towers wish they
could have freedom from power cords and no 137GB
limits on storage. In the graphs below, I seek to
show how the new bus powered Wiebetech Super
FireWire kits with 180GB drives can significantly
increase your speed and capacity. REAL WORLD
TESTS Duplicating the
457MB "pak0.pk3" file from Quake3 is my favorite
test since it forces the drive to read and write to
itself at the same time. By setting
Photoshop's memory size to 41MB and having it
rotate a 45MB document, I force it to read from and
write to the scratch disk... which is defined as
the drive being tested. BENCHMARKS -
INTECH's QUICKBENCH X PERFORMANCE
ANALYSIS The
WiebeTech
bus powered 180+ GB FireWire bus powered solutions
provide a new level of performance, capacity, and
convenience to PowerBook and iBook users as well as
Power Mac and iMac users who want the freedom from
power cords and capacity restrictions. These bus powered
3.5 inch FireWire setups blow away the best 2.5
inch portable solutions like the Travelstar 60GH
and 40GNX, as you can see in the graphs above.
Plus, the 180+ GB drives are actually less
expensive than the 60GH. SURPRISES
& CAVEATS 10/25/02 --
Correction: I received confirmation from Granite
Digital (and a reader) that the SMART
FireVue
case kit supports ATA-6 (137+ GB) drives.
Furthermore, their SMART case will tell you if your
drive is about to fail. So WiebeTech's
Super DriveDock and Super DesktopGB are not the
only FireWire solutions to support ATA-6 drives, as
I stated at the top of this page. However, the
WiebeTech case kits do run off of bus power, while
the Granite case requires A/C power. If you bought a
WiebeTech
Super DriveDock or Super DesktopGB without ATA-6
support, you can upgrade for as little as $69. (If
you bought within the last 15 days, you might do
even better). There are a few
drives that can't can't run on FireWire bus power.
Contact WiebeTech for a list of
exceptions. The Maxtor
D540X-4G 160GB 5400rpm drive performed surprisingly
well compared to the 7200rpm drives. It actually
beat them on the sustained benchmark. Even these
cutting edge 180+ GB drives seem to hit the wall at
35MB/sec when connected to any of the FireWire
bridgeboards. If that's not enough speed and you
have a G3/G4 Power Mac "tower," you might want to
consider buying an ATA-133 PCI host controller card
and mounting the new 180+ GB drives internally. To
illustrate the point, I've provided a few more
graphs below. WHERE TO
BUY The
WiebeTech
Super
DesktopGB, Super DriveDock, and "normal" FireWire
DriveDock can be ordered directly from Weibetech
with or without a drive. (If you order the Super
DesktopGB with a drive, I suggest the IBM 120GXP or
180GXP for maximum overall performance.) Ask about
upgrading your existing Wiebetech
product. If you want to
buy a bare drive for the Wiebetech case kits or
docks, you'll find low prices at Other
World Computing,
NewEgg,
and GoogleGear.
(Go to each site and do a search on "180gxp" or
"wd1800bb" or "wd2000jb" or "diamondmax plus" or
etc.). At GoogleGear, the IBM 180GXP 180GB 7200rpm
ATA-133 drive is in stock and going for
$299
plus $1 for 2-day FedEx shipping. WiebeTech
also sells a fast FireWire PCI card. My favorite
FireWire cables are the thin white ones from the
Apple
Online Store.
(See cables section.) TEST
NOTES FireWire drive
testing was done on an Apple Titanium
G4/800 PowerBook
(1GB RAM, OS X 10.2.1). Tests were repeated on a
Power Mac but results were the same. Drives
tested: FireWire cases
and docks tested: Ultra ATA-133
results were produced using the Sonnet
Tempo ATA-133
PCI controller card installed in a G4/1000MP Power
Mac running OS X (10.2.1). REAL WORLD TESTS
included... 2. Duplicating
a 457MB document on the test drive, forcing it
to read adn write to itself,
simultaneously. BENCHMARK
TEST... |
HOME PAGE SPEED TEST RESULTS by Category LINKS to SPEED tests on other sites HOT DEALS on speed upgrades
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© 2002 Rob Art
Morgan "BARE facts on Macintosh speed FEATS" Email webmaster at rob-art@barefeats.com
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