Andrew Nye <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >I'm looking to buy a 120GB internal HD for my Beige (Sonnet 500MHz G4, >Radeon 7000 Mac Edition). Choices I'm faced with are: > >Seagate Barracuda 7200 >Hitachi Deskstar (8Mb Cache) >Maxtor (Diamond Max Plus) UDMA 133Mhz >Western Digital (7200) > >There is not much price difference between these options, so my >questions are: > >Can my machine take advantage of the Deskstar 8Mb cache?
Somewhat. I suspect your IDE bus won't even keep up with the disk transfer rates, let alone the cache; but it may help for seeks or when the heads are parked. The larger cache certainly won't hurt. >What about UDMA? All IDE drives sold today are UDMA capable and the 133 indicates it's an ATA-6 drive. Since the onboard IDE on the Beige's is ATA-3, you'll see no benefit there. >Is one make better than the others? Well, I've had good luck with Maxtor drives. >Sorry, forgot to say: I'm connecting my HD to the onboard bus, ie not >to a PCI card as, unfortunately I've run out of slots - USB; FW; and >video. That's unfortunate, as the onboard IDE on the Beige's was particularly slow: ATA-3 with a peak of 16.6 MB/s. >Incidentally, 120GB *is* the largest drive I can access isn't it? Yes; unless you get an higher-end IDE card. -Jeff [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- "You can't brew a premium lager with a kool-aid mentality." --Harold Green in _The_Red_Green_Show_ -- G-List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- We have Apple Refurbished Monitors in stock! | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-List list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
