How
Do The "Old" FireWire Drive Enclosures Compare To
The NEW "Oxford 911" Drive Enclosures in the REAL
WORLD? July
13th, 2001 OBSERVATIONS 1. The new
48GB Travelstar 2.5 inch drive in a "911" case
is almost as fast as the 46GB Deskstar 75gxp 3.5
inch drive in a VST case. 2. VST's "old"
portable drive has a thing or two to teach the
new portable FireWire drives about dealing with
small documents. 3. The 48GB
5400rpm Travelstar 2.5 inch costing
$486
was only slightly faster than the 30GB 4200rpm
Travelstar 2.5 inch costing as little as
$216. The new
2.5
inch 48GB 5400 rpm IBM
Travelstar
is a sweet drive. It brings a new level of
performance to portable drives. I was also very
struck by how quiet the drive was even
when I made it thrash in the "duplicate 1693
small documents" test. This must be due to the
fluid dynamic spindle motor bearings. It
is a tempting upgrade as the main internal drive
on a Titanium PowerBook or iBook
2001. However, as
you can see in the test results, compared to the
3.5 inch drives in Oxford 911 FireWire cases,
the 48GB Travelstar in the Oxford 911 FireWire
cases falls short. That's partly due to the
lower spindle speed (7200rpm vs 5400rpm) and
slower average seek time (8.5ms vs 12ms). But
yet if you compare it to the VST Full Height
FireWire case with the same 7200 rpm 3.5 inch
drive, the 48GB Travelstar READS only slightly
slower and WRITES much faster. Warning: Not
all FireWire enclosures are created
equal. As noted in
previous
articles,
and as you can see in the charts on the
FIRST
PAGE,
the iBook 2001 (and Power Mac G4) squeezes
more speed out of the 48GB Travelstar
FireWire drive than the G4 Titanium
PowerBook. Speed issues
aside, the 48GB Travelstar can take an 150G
shock during operation. By comparison, 3.5
inch drives like the IBM 60gxp can only handle a
55G shock during operation. And when the
Travelstar is turned off and just bouncing
around in your backpack, it can handle 700G
shock load. So if you need mucho gigabytes of
portable storage it's hard to beat the 48GB
Travelstar... literally. And if you want it
to be external and run off FireWire bus power,
you'll be thrilled with both the
FWDepot
"911" and Trans
International
"911" enclosures. TESTS NOT
RUN YET I'm hoping to
"log and capture" some digital video clips to
the 48GB in the FireWire enclosures to see if we
dropped frames (and how many). Ditto with
playback. I'll report back here as soon as I
have that data. TEST
NOTES TEST
DRIVES 2.5
inch 30GB 4200 rpm IBM
Travelstar
courtesy of Trans
International 3.5
inch 40GB 7200 rpm IBM Deskstar
60GXP
purchased from NewEgg.com 3.5 inch 46GB
7200 rpm IBM Deskstar 75GXP courtesy of
Other
World Computing FIREWIRE
ENCLOSURES The SK 2.5
inch FireWire '911' FireWire enclosure courtesy
of FWDepot FireWire 1394
3.5 inch Case Kit courtesy of Granite
Digital. The
SmartDisk/VST
Full Height (46GB) and Portable Combo
(30GB). TEST
SYSTEMS On the
previous page, I used three different test
mules: WHERE TO
BUY FEATURED PRODUCTS 2.5
inch 48GB 5400 rpm IBM
Travelstar
is selling for $486 at Trans
International.
That's the best price I've seen anywhere. (They
also have the 32, 30, and 20GB
Travelstar.) The SK 2.5
inch FireWire '911' FireWire enclosure is
selling for $130 at FWDepot,
but I like their new MP2.5 Clearlight eDrive
better ($130). The
"Clear
911" Ultra
Compact
FireWire enclosure sells for $125 at Trans
International. WHERE TO ORDER YOUR APPLE PRODUCTS © 1995-2007 Rob Art Morgan BARE FEATS HOME
(and list of most recent test results)
by rob
ART morgan,
Bare Feats Mad Scientist
This
page is a continuation of the
article comparing the 48G
Travelstar
2.5 inch drive to the 40GB IBM 60gxp 3.5 inch
drive, both running in new "Oxford 911" FireWire
enclosures. However, after running the "real
world" tests, I began to wonder if they were
really much faster than the "older" generation
of FireWire drive enclosures. Just a year ago,
the VST drives were "king." I fired them up on a
Dual G4/533 Power Mac to see how they all play
together.
PERFORMANCE
ANALYSIS
2.5
inch 48GB 5400 rpm IBM
Travelstar
courtesy of Trans
International
The "Clear
911" Ultra
Compact
Portable 2.5 inch FireWire enclosure courtesy of
Trans
International
On this page, the test mule was a Power Mac Dual
G4/533 running Mac OS 9.1 and FireWire 2.8.2.
(No third party FireWire drive extensions were
used.)
1. iBook 2001
2. Titanium G4/500 PowerBook
3. Power Mac Dual G4/533
(All three were running Mac OS 9.1 and FireWire
2.8.2)
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