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on speed upgrades PAGE
TWO of TWO Originally
posted 09/12/03 by rob-ART
morgan,
mad scientist This is PAGE TWO
has the REAL WORLD test results showing how much
Serial ATA drives slow down as they get filled up
and write to the inner tracks. ANALYSIS As you can
plainly see, SATA drives lose as much as half their
speed as the inner tracks are reached. The same
phenomenon occurs with all kinds of drives
(Parallel ATA, FireWire, SCSI). The speed drop may
or may not affect your work. One way to diminish
the speed loss is to partition your drive, putting
speed critical apps and docs in the first partition
and non-critical things in the second
partition. The Maxtor
DiamondMax Plus 9 was less affected by the drop in
speed than the other two drives. Its "end of
drive" speed was best in 4 out of 7 tests. It did
best in WRITE tests. The Hitachi
Deskstar 7K250 was second fastest at the "end of
drive." It scored best in 3 out of 7 tests. It
did best in READ tests. The Seagate
Barracuda 7200.7, came in third. It tied for
first in 2 out of 7 tests. (Remember, this is the
drive that comes standard on G5 Power
Macs.) RELATED
ARTICLES or LINKS Three
SATA
drives compared to two PATA
drives
converted to SATA. Which flavor of
SATA drives makes the best
RAID 0 striped
array? SATA
versus PATA vs FireWire 800 Four
drive, four channel RAID
shootout
between Ultra ATA133, FireWire 800 and Ultra320
SCSI. TEST
NOTES The Power Mac
G4/1.42MP with 2GB of DDR memory and OS X (10.2.6)
was the test mule. It was purchased from
Small
Dog Electronics. CONTROLLER DRIVES
TESTED Hitachi
Deskstar
7K250
250GB Serial ATA version Maxtor
DiamondMax
Plus 9
160GB Serial ATA version Seagate
Barracuda
7200.7
160GB Serial ATA version (This drive was also the
one Apple ships from the factory inside the
G5/1.8GHz tower.) Good sources for
buying Serial ATA drives include Buy.com
and GoogleGear.
(Search on key word like "7K250" or "DiamondMax" or
"Barracuda".) SEE
"HOW
WE TEST"
for details on the tests reflected in the
graphs.
(Bare Feats is hosted on a
G4 Power Mac server by MacDock.com) Has Bare Feats helped
you? How about helping
Bare Feats?
"BARE facts on Macintosh speed FEATS"
The dual channel SeriTek/1S2
Serial ATA PCI host adapter from FirmTek
(5.0.2 of the firmware). For your G5 tower, you
need firmware version 5.0.3. This can be ordered
direct from FirmTek.
Refurbs? Think Small. SmallDog.com
"BARE facts on Macintosh speed FEATS"
Email webmaster at rob-art@barefeats.com