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FWDepot's
New "Titanium" Portable FireWire Drive Takes On
VST's "IceCube" and Granite Digital's
"Iceberg." April
20th, 2001 I
tested the FWDepot
Silver 2.5X
on three different Macintoshes: All
three systems used Mac OS 9.1 and Apple's
generic FireWire support extensions
(2.8.1). The
FWDepot
BTVN 2.5X
Silver
(30GB) had faster write speeds than the
VST
USB/FireWire
30GB
but slower read speeds. On
"price/performance" the FWDepot blows away the
VST. If you add the $130 for the FWDepot Silver
enclosure and $329 for an IBM TravelStar 30G
4200rpm drive, you have a sassy setup for $459
total. Compare that to the VST
USB/FireWire
30GB
with the same 30G TravelStar at $850. (The 20G
version savings is equally dramatic at $285
versus $500.) It
was a bit unfair to compare the 7 x 10"
Granite
Digital
enclosure with the "Oxford 911" chip set and
7200rpm IBM 75GXP drive to the two portables but
I'm responding to requests from readers who want
the fastest FireWire drive for their PowerBook,
no matter how big the case or power
requirements. The "big dog" wins on read speed
but is only slightly faster on write speed when
used with PowerBooks. What
I really want is a small drive that goes like
the Granite but is as small as the FWDepot
drive. Granite
Digital
is supposed to be working on just such a drive
but with the FireWire interface limitations on
the PowerBooks coupled with slow drives, it may
be all for naught. Miscellaneous
observations: The FWDepot
CardBus FireWire card produced transfer rates as
fast or faster than that of the built-in
FireWire on the Titanium PowerBook. That's good
news if you want to create a "dual channel"
FireWire setup. The PowerBook Wallstreet has
a reputation of slow FireWire sustained WRITE
performance using the CardBus interface but the
Titanium PowerBook turned out to be just as
slow. That's compounded by the fact that drives
tend to slow down as they fill up. That's bad
news for Digital Video studios trying to use
PowerBooks for production. Can you say "frame
dropping," boys and girls? The 3.5 inch Granite FW drive
could READ and WRITE much faster on a desktop
Power Mac than on any model of PowerBook.
Even a Power Mac 9600 with a
G3/300 cpu and FireWire PCI card could read and
write faster than any PowerBook. Even though PCI
FireWire is slower than built-in, I measured
27MB/sec sustained READ and 22MB/sec sustained
WRITE. The FWDepot Silver drive
weighed less than the VST (9.25 oz vs 10 oz) but
was slightly larger in size. (The Granite
Digital "iceberg" weighed in at 3 lbs, 14
oz.) Both the FWDepot Silver and
the VST USB/FireWire portable drives could run
on FireWire bus power unless you are using a
CardBus adapter. In that case, you must use the
A/C adapter. In other words, if you don't want
to be tied to an A/C outlet, you'll need to own
either a Pismo or Titanium PowerBook with
built-in FireWire ports. (Anybody want to buy my
Wallstreet?) WHERE
TO BUY? The
FWDepot
BTVN 2.5X
Silver
is available direct from www.fwdepot.com. The
IBM TravelStar 30G drive sells for $329 at
Trans
International.
They also have the 20G version for $155. The
drive mounts in the FWDepot Silver case without
requiring screws. The only trick is to remember
to snap it in upside down. Don't
have FireWire in your G3 PowerBook?
FWDepot
has a good CardBus card with two ports for $86.
Don't have FireWire on your Desktop? Get a PCI
controller. The fastest PCI FireWire/USB combo
card I've tested is the USB/FireWire PCI card
from FWDepot.
If you don't need USB and just want to add more
FireWire channels, then you might hold out for
the soon to be released Granite
Digital 3 Channel PCI
controller.
If
speed is more important than portability, check
out Granite
Digital's
site for enclosures,
drives, and PCI
controllers.
If you a company that sells FireWire enclosures
and/or drives, you can buy the Granite Digital
FireWire/IDE
bridge board.
You won't find a faster bridge board
anywhere. Other
World Computing
has a new Elite version of their Mercury
FireWire drives that produced sustained write
speeds of 19MB/sec in their testing. That's not
as fast as I got with the Granite Digital but
the test system and drive might have been
different. Stay tuned for a BARE FEATS shootout
between the two drives. See
the STORAGE section of my HOT
DEALS
page for prices on these and other FireWire
products. TEST NOTES SUSTAINED READ
AND WRITE SPEED
TEST RESULTS
from Bare Feats (by CATEGORY) LINKS
to SPEED tests on other web sites HOT
SPEED DEALS DOWNLOADS
that add more SPEED SPEED
UPGRADE
guide ©
2001 Rob
Art Morgan. (This
site served up by MacDock.com)
by rob
ART morgan,
mad Mac scientistFWDepot
has a nifty new silver FireWire enclosure for
2.5 inch drives. It's not really made of
titanium but it matches the color of the
Titanium G4 PowerBook very closely. Not only
does the BTVN 2.5X Silver Enclosure snap
together (no screw drivers needed) but you can
"roll your own" 20GB FireWire drive for $285.
Now do I have your attention?
1. PowerBook G4/500 Titanium (both built-in and
cardbus FireWire)
2. PowerBook Wallstreet (with Newer G3/466
upgrade + cardbus FireWire)
3. Power Mac Dual G4/533 (built-in
FireWire)
PERFORMANCE
ANALYSIS
(Don't
make the mistake of going to
www.firewiredepot.com. That's not the same
company. In fact, it is a domain purchased by
FirewireDirect, a competing company, that is
probably trying to lure you away from
FWDepot.)
The sustained read/write benchmark was run using
ExpressPro-Tools
2.5
(SCSI and Fibre Channel version 2.5 for Mac).
When you launch it, it displays all the mounted
drives (IDE, SCSI, FireWire). Select the drive
you want to test (one click). Then go to the
Utilities menu and select Benchmark Volume. A
test window will appear. Set Max Transfer Size
to 8MB. Then press start. On my graphs I display
sustained rate, not peak rate. Peak rate is
skewed by the drive cache and doesn't reflect
real world performance.
Gotta Question? Comment?
Email rob-art@barefeats.com