From: Andrea Salvarani <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [G] Acard 6880M
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 11:11:34 +0930
On 14/11/2005, at 9:36 AM, B.L. wrote:
I know this is a raid card, for ide or scsi drives I am not too sure.
It is for IDE drives. It supports hardware RAID, but can be used for
a single drive, or multiple drives not in a RAID.
Also I wondered whether or not you can hook a single drive to this card
and run it that way. I'm tempted to just take it out and replace it
with
the SIIG SATA card I have on hand and get me a couple of SATA
harddrives
to go with it, What are your thoughts. Thanks for any and all responses
to my inquiry.
The last time I checked the user's manuals for all of Acard's
products were available on their website. The website is (strangely
enough) <http://www.acard.com>. Their site is neither well
organized, nor well written, but it is very complete. At least with
Mozilla, I get some weird unresponsive links, but if something
doesn't work in the sidebar, try the top tabs and vice versa. But
firmware updaters and user's manuals are there nicely available.
This was the RAID version of the ATA card, you can use it normally or
to support a RAID system, and I think it is ATA66.
It is an ATA-133 card.
SATA should be way faster. I have been tempted to go SATA, but I heard
some awful stories from PC friends and I don't think I read any thread
about it on this list. As I have a digital SLR and do a lot a photo
processing (I shoot RAW), I think the 150MB/s of data transfer provided
by the SATA interface should be of great advantage.
A good hard drive will spin fast enough to deliver something like 60
MB/s of data. It matters very little if your electronic interface is
faster than that. I may be out of date. Have they gotten the top
end drives faster than that now?
A few years ago, a fast drive delivered 20 - 30 MB/s of data if you
were lucky. A few years before than it was 12 - 14 MB/s. If you
buy older models of drives which are still on the market, that's the
kind of performance you can expect, regardless of the electronic
interface that is attached to the drive. The speed the platters
spin, the speed the heads can move, and the density of the data on
the platters limits the speed at which a drive can, in reality,
deliver data. No drive is pushing the limits of today's 133 MB/S
interface (unless I became suddenly out of date).
Way back when I was so proud to finally have an FWB JackHammer Fast &
Wide SCSI card. This was back when NuBus was nifty technology. Fast
& Wide SCSI delivers 20 MB/s maximum theoretical performance. I
proceeded to buy some of the newly released Seagate Barracuda drives
and attach them to my spiffy top-of-the-line SCSI card. I never
could get better than 6 MB/s out of those fast, loud and hot (and
very expensive) drives. I thought I was going to get 17 - 18 MB/s
performance at least.
SCSI was capable of delivering 20 MB/s back then. Hard drives just
couldn't do better than 6 MB/s even if they spun at what was (back
then) an incredible 7200 RPM.
We're still in the same situation. The numbers are bigger, but the
electronic interfaces are way faster than the hardware of the drives
can sling data.
Jeff Walther
--
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/>
iPod Accessories for Less
at 1-800-iPOD.COM
Fast Delivery, Low Price, Good Deal
www.1800ipod.com
