I think we're agreeing as far as usable vs. theoretical throughput for
wireless. For wired Ethernet I've seen 100% usage on 100Mb Ethernet
often. That means about 10MB per second on a file copy over Ethernet. I
haven't been able to peg the throughput on a Gb Ethernet and I think
that's because my hard drives just can keep up. In theory you should be
able to pump 100MB per second over a dedicated Gb Ethernet connection.
There is a nice speed tester which is accessible here:
http://www.aja.com/html/support_kona2_swd.html
Called AJA KONA System Test Version 2. I ran this on my external
firewire MyBook drive with a 1Gb test file size and got 31 MB/s write
and 34MB/s read. Theoretical throughput is 40 so I'm not sure if the
drive ran out of steam or the connection saturated. On my MacBook Pro
running the same test on the internal drive I got 28.4MB/s write and
28.8MB/s read. So my external Firewire drive is actually faster than my
laptop drive. In any case, neither one would be able to come close to
filling a Gb Ethernet pipe. I ran the same test on a dual G5 Mac and it
pegged at 49.9MB/s write and 52.3MB/s read. I also ran the same test on
a Quad processor Intel Mac and it only did slightly better at 54.7MB/s
for both read and write. So it looks like that just as good as it gets
for my hard drive throughput.
NewEgg has the MyBook 500GB for $130 so it's not a whole lot different.
You can also find deals on DealMac which are usually short term specials.
http://dealmac.com/
CB
Jane Lee wrote:
I'm not sure what kind of devices you're dealing with, but with real world
speed tests, no consumer level devices come close to the theoretical or even
real world limits for gigabit ethernet or firewire 800.
Also, costco's prices on the mybook are fairly criminal. in fact, costco's
prices on electronics other than TVs is fairly outrageous. I'm not sure why
there's such a price discrepancy between costco and my favorite retailers
(i.e. newegg) half the time.
cheers,
jane
On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 7:57 AM, Chris Blouch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
After all that, if all you need is more storage, just get an external
firewire drive or network attached storage (NAS). If you hook up a NAS via
GigaBit Ethernet you can actually move stuff faster than Firewire 800.
Probably will hit the limits on what your laptop drive can handle. Using
wireless you'll be limited to what the real throughput of your wireless
network is. 802.11g has a theoretical throughput of 54Mbs but you'll usually
get about 20 or less depending on how far away from the transmitter you are,
how many walls/floors you're going through etc. That means about 2MB per
second more or less. Enough to do some nice streaming media and web surfing
but pretty pokey for disk storage. Also, TimeMachine will only work with
local connected drives or Apple's Time Capsule for wireless. I'm using a
local firewire Western Digital 500GB myBook for backups and extra storage
which has been working well. Costco has them for about $120.
CB
