CONCLUSIONS
The Dual Drive
Ultra ATA Hardware ATA-133 RAID was the fastest.
It has the advantage of being compatible with
both OS 9 and OS 10. So such a setup would make
an awesome boot drive for those of you jumping
back and forth.
(We've come a
long way since it took four Ultra160 SCSI drives
to reach 100MB/sec.)
The second
fastest setup was a tie between the Sonnet Tempo
ATA-100 with software RAID and the Acard 6880M
with Software RAID. I say "tie" because the
Sonnet had the second fastest READ speed and the
Acard had the second fastest WRITE
speed.
Software RAID
is actually more flexible than the hardware
method since it allows for more than two drives
and enables you to mirror as well as stripe. The
ultimate Ultra ATA setup, to me, would be dual
hardware RAID cards with two drives each. Then
use software to mirror one pair to the
other.
Even with two
separate FireWire controllers, the software
induced FireWire RAID came in third. I just wish
Apple would wake up and offer dual controller
FireWire internally. It would be faster than
"faking" it with a FireWire PCI card running in
parallel to the internal FireWire.
WHERE TO
BUY
NewEgg.com
has the best price on the IBM 120gxp. (Search on
"120gxp")
The Acard
AEC-6880M
True Hardware RAID Ultra
ATA-133
card is available from Other
World Computing.
A reader found the same card with the SIIG label
on TheNerds.Net
for $132.
(Search on the catalog number:
989889)
WHERE TO ORDER YOUR APPLE PRODUCTS
When ordering products from Apple Store USA, please click THIS TEXT LINK or any Apple display ad as your "portal" to the online store. In so doing, you help to support Bare Feats.
TEST
NOTES
The test
"mule" was an Apple
Dual G4/800 with disk cache set to 512K (to
diminish effect of system caching), AppleTalk
OFF, Virtual Memory OFF, and Extensions set to
minimal (BASE).
TESTED
HARDWARE ATA RAID SETUP
AEC-6880M
True Hardware RAID Ultra ATA-133 PCI
Adapter
connected to two Western Digital
Caviar
WD1200JB
drives, each with its own 80 conductor Teflon
data cable and each with its own
port.
TESTED
SOFTWARE ATA RAID SETUPS
AEC-6880M
True Hardware RAID Ultra ATA-133 PCI
Adapter
connected to two Western Digital
Caviar
WD1200JB
drives, each with its own 80 conductor Teflon
data cable and each with its own port.... but
using Intech
HD Speed Tools
3.4
QuickStripe function.
Sonnet
Tempo ATA-100 PCI
adapter
connected to two Western Digital
Caviar
WD1200JB
drives, each with its own 80 conductor Teflon
data cable and each with its own port.... but
using Intech
HD Speed Tools
3.4
QuickStripe function.
TESTED
FIREWIRE DRIVE SYSTEM
Dual Granite
Digital "911" Case
Kits
(each with a Western Digital Caviar
WD1200JB
drive and each with its own FireWire controller
-- one internal, one FWDepot
PCI FireWire PCI card)
TEST
DRIVERS/FORMATTERS:
Intech
HD Speed Tools
3.4
(formatter and FW enablers)
(includes QuickStripe RAID 0 support for a pair
of FireWire, ATA, or SCSI drives)
TEST
PROCEDURES:
Used QuickBench software from Intech
test smaller RANDOM read/writes and larger
SEQUENTIAL read/writes. I used 10MB block size
for the sequential so the speed can't be
explained in terms of the 8MB buffer on the
Western Digital drives.
© 1995-2007 Rob Art Morgan
"BARE facts on Macintosh speed FEATS"
Email
, the webmaster
