Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
On Jan 24, 2011, at 2:53 PM, Kris Tilford wrote: On Jan 24, 2011, at 3:46 PM, JoeTaxpayer wrote: why so hostile? Tired of dealing with guessing. Definitely faster? You sure? Yes, I'm sure. To confirm that from a 2nd source, look to the original poster who says: After a bunch of testing speeds not only is the external 7200 IDE FW 400 HDD making the 1.25 Mini run faster than the ATA 4200 but Tiger is about 25% faster than Leopard. Notice the word testing. I've also done this testing myself. Yes, I am sure. I'm happy someone acknowledged my efforts these ten tests took most of the day, Now someone mentioned over-clocking the MOBO is there some step by step instructions so I can attempt it? Would that change the overall speeds including the FW 400? Or do I need to start a new OP? John Carmonne Yorba Linda CA 92886 USA Sent from my MBP -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
At 3:05 PM -0800 1/24/2011, John Carmonne wrote: Would [over-clocking] change the overall speeds including the FW 400? Over-clocking increases the speed of the cpu and perhaps the memory bus (since its speed is usually a multiple of the cpu's). It does not change the speed of the i/o buses or their interfaces. Will it increase i/o throughput? Perhaps. The cpu has to set up the i/o requests, respond when completed, set up the next ones, respond, set up, respond, etc. The faster it can do that, the less WAIT time there is between operations... A busy bus is a happy bus. - Dan. -- - Psychoceramic Emeritus; South Jersey, USA, Earth. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
On Jan 24, 8:58 pm, Kris Tilford ktilfo...@cox.net wrote: I learned this THE HARD WAY, I actually BOUGHT FW800 enclosures expecting them to be TWICE AS FAST as my old FW400 enclosures, but when I TESTED THEM, they were the SAME SPEED, not because they're not CAPABLE of twice as fast, but because you'd need a RAID of multiple HDs to saturate the connection. This whole 1.5 Gbps or 3.0 Gbps thing for individual HDs is 100% hype. No single HD can sustain anything near that rate. Mechanical LATENCY is the reason. It doesn't matter how fast the electronics can move bits when the mechanical parts can't move equally as fast. grinning I learned this exact same lesson in the mid-90s. On Nubus machines... I finally had a PPC NuBus machine (8100 clone) and a I got the holy grail of interface cards, the FWB Jackhammer Fast Wide SCSI card. I had an assortment of ST32550 drives, some N (narrow, 50 pin) and some W (wide, 68 pin). The 32550 was the latest, fastest Barracuda from Seagate and was amongst the very first 7200 RPM drive available. A single ST32550W on the JackHammer really didn't provide any better performance than a single ST32550N on the built-in busses, even though the specifications say 20MB/s vs. 10MB/s. What! But it should be so much faster! Then I built a RAID of four ST32550W on the JackHammer. I got maybe 8MB/s actual performance out of it.It was actually faster to have a RAID of two ST32550W drives than it was to have four of them. I ultimately found that the fastest RAID was two ST32550Ws on the JackHammer, one ST32550N on the built-in Fast SCSI bus, and one ST32550N on the built-in non-Fast bus. That got me about 12MB/s or twice what a single drive could deliver. Anyway, point is, sure the electronics could do 20 MB/s (maybe) but the drives back then could only output maybe 6 MB/s each and as one tried to gang those up in a RAID, inefficiencies in the infrastructure ate up a lot of the potential performance. Of course, drives today are almost ten times faster (more than?) but the principles haven't changed a bit.A 133 MB/s interface doesn't matter one wit, if the drive can only deliver 70MB/s of data. Jeff Walther -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
Of course, drives today are almost ten times faster (more than?) but the principles haven't changed a bit.A 133 MB/s interface doesn't matter one wit, if the drive can only deliver 70MB/s of data. And, the internal performance of some drives is as low as 40 MB/s. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
On Jan 23, 2011, at 7:51 AM, iJohn wrote: On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 3:36 PM, John Carmonne carmo...@aol.com wrote: If I use an external 3.5 7200 RPM via Firewire 400 will I gain speed over the internal HDD 4200 RPM in my Mac Mini? That's a hard one to guess at. But my guess would be no, I don't think you'd see a gain. Or if there was one, it would not be as large as you hoped. When you connect via Firewire 400 you will never be able to move data faster than Firewire 400's 400Mbps bus speed. I suppose it's possible that a 7200 RPM drive would still appear to perform faster than an internal 4200 RPM, but I wouldn't count on it. OK then let me ask is the internal drive Bus 167 speed going to be faster than the same drive connected to the FireWire 400? And does that relate to overall performance of my G4 PPC Mac Mini 1.25? John Carmonne Yorba Linda CA 92886 USA Sent from my MBP -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
On Jan 22, 3:36 pm, John Carmonne carmo...@aol.com wrote: If I use an external 3.5 7200 RPM via Firewire 400 will I gain speed over the internal HDD 4200 RPM in my Mac Mini? In my personal experience, my friend, the speed and size of the external drive more than make up for the slower bus (FW vs. ATA). I have used an eMac with an external FW drive for centuries now, and it beats the internal 80GB HDD every time. An internal 7200RP or SSD HDD would definitely speed things up, but they are not cost effective. I would go FW. Just my 2 cents. Best, Felix -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
On Jan 23, 2011, at 9:34 AM, Ashgrove wrote: On Jan 22, 3:36 pm, John Carmonne carmo...@aol.com wrote: If I use an external 3.5 7200 RPM via Firewire 400 will I gain speed over the internal HDD 4200 RPM in my Mac Mini? In my personal experience, my friend, the speed and size of the external drive more than make up for the slower bus (FW vs. ATA). I have used an eMac with an external FW drive for centuries now, and it beats the internal 80GB HDD every time. An internal 7200RP or SSD HDD would definitely speed things up, but they are not cost effective. I would go FW. Just my 2 cents. Best, Felix\ After a bunch of testing speeds not only is the external 7200 IDE FW 400 HDD making the 1.25 Mini run faster than the ATA 4200 but Tiger is about 25% faster than Leopard. JOHN CARMONNE Yorba Linda USA From TiBook 867 -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
On Jan 23, 2011, at 9:51 AM, iJohn wrote: That's a hard one to guess at. But my guess would be no, I don't think you'd see a gain. Or if there was one, it would not be as large as you hoped. What? Why are you guessing? These are measurable facts. Guessing about things isn't acceptable. Either you know some factual information or factual reasoning about a topic, or you don't. In this case, YOU DON'T, so you shouldn't have posted. I suppose it's possible that a 7200 RPM drive would still appear to perform faster than an internal 4200 RPM, but I wouldn't count on it. A 7,200 RPM HD is DEFINITELY faster in a FW400 enclosure than either a 5,400 RPM or 4,200 RPM. Have you ever even booted from Firewire on a daily basis? Have you made measurements? Have you streamed video off a Firewire enclosure? Obviously your experience is limited. More to the point, I feel fairly confident that you would not really be able to tell the difference between a (recent) SATA 5400 versus 7200 when connected via Firewire 400. BASED UPON WHAT FACTS? In my experience MEASURING the difference in speed, the difference is LARGE and EASY to tell the difference between. In other words, if you're going to go with a Firewire 400 external drive I'd suggest going with a 5400 drive and save a few bucks. With the recent improvements in platter bit densities over the last year or two, the throughput of 5400 drives has increased noticeably. The difference between 5400 and 7200 is not as noticeable especially when you put that 400 Mbps cap on the drive throughput. It's the HD ITSELF that's the limiting factor here, NOT the Firewire connection. Any gain you make to the HD will transfer directly, arithmetically to the Mini's HD performance. === On Jan 23, 2011, at 10:22 AM, John Carmonne wrote: OK then let me ask is the internal drive Bus 167 speed going to be faster than the same drive connected to the FireWire 400? A 2.5 HD connected to the internal ATA bus is going to be slightly faster than any HD connected via Firewire 400, but if the internal 2.5 HD is the standard OEM 5,400 RPM and the external FW400 is a 3.5 7,200 RPM the difference will be minimalized substantially. The fastest you can achieve will be a SSD connected to the internal ATA; followed by a 7,200RPM 2.5 or 5,400RPM 2.5 connected to the internal ATA; followed by a 7,200RPM 3.5 connected via Firewire 400, and then any slower HDs connected via FW400. And does that relate to overall performance of my G4 PPC Mac Mini 1.25? The best thing you can do to your 1.25GHz Mini for performance is to overclock it to 1.42GHz. It's a simple overclock IF you can see well, the resistors are TINY. I never soldered mine, they were too small for my soldering ability. Instead, to remove one I cut the solder with an exacto knife (any tiny sharp knife or razor blade might work?), and to add one I used conductive circuit paint using a toothpick. It's a free 15% speed gain with no downside unless you screw-up and botch the job. As Newertech and several other companies noticed, there isn't much downside to booting a PPC Mini from a 3.5 7,200RPM HD instead of the 2.5 5,400 RPM OEM drive, and the proliferation of MiniStack enclosures is a testament to that concept. I've been using my Mini as a media-center computer and I'm trying to squeeze every last bit of performance from it, so I boot from a small internal 2.5 7,200 RPM drive and use a 1 TB Apple Time Capsule for media storage, but this isn't much better than booting from a MiniStack or any good Firewire enclosure with a modern 3.5 HD. Note, there is NO difference in speed between a 3.5 ATA133/150 HD and a 3.5 SATA HD inside a FW400 enclosure. If an SATA HD enclosure are cheaper, that's the best deal, but if you have an older ATA 7,200 RPM HD enclosure it should be identical in performance. There are some Firewire 400 enclosures with poor performance chipsets, but these are rare in more modern enclosures. Definitely avoid anything by GeneSys Logic which will NOT work. Oxford is best, and anything by a HD manufacturer is good. The 1.25 Mini is going to be a little bit too slow to play modern HD video smoothly, the bottleneck isn't the HD, it's the Radeon 9200 video which unfortunately can't be upgraded at all, and severely limits these older PPC Minis. I suspect slower G4 PowerMacs with better video cards can outperform these G4 Minis. About the only thing you can do to get better video card performance is limit the resolution to something smaller. Unfortunately on my HDTV the only proportional resolution available is the highest resolution 1,920x1080 which kills the video performance and renders HD quality video to a stuttering mess. Any lower resolution would increase performance, but in my case, such isn't possible. Tiger 10.4 is about 15-20% faster on the G4 Mini than
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
A 7,200 RPM HD is DEFINITELY faster in a FW400 enclosure than either a 5,400 RPM or 4,200 RPM. Have you ever even booted from Firewire on a daily basis? Have you made measurements? Have you streamed video off a Firewire enclosure? Obviously your experience is limited. The rotational speed of a drive (3,600 rpm, 4,200 rpm, 5,400 rpm, 7,200 rpm or, indeed, infinite rpm) directly impacts the latency of a drive's performance, generally taken to be one-half of the reciprocal of the effective rpm of the drive. Indeed, using this measure alone, a 7,200 rpm drive is twice as fast as a 3,600 rpm drive. Yeah, right! (3,600 rpm WAS the classic speed of a mainframe drive, but as the demand for higher-capacity drives became evident, the only way to achieve the required higher capacity, within the same hard drive FORM FACTOR, was to REDUCE the rpm, thereby giving a 9 GB capacity from an otherwise 3 GB capacity drive, or an 18 GB capacity from an oherwise 6 GB capacity drive, etcetera). Yet, the average throughput capacity of most drive electronics and host bus adapter electronics remained essentially the same, at about 40 megabytes/second, MAXIMUM. And, the average latency is still one-half of the reciprocal of the rotational speed. Can't change physics. It is immutable. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
Kris, why so hostile? Since FW400 is limited to 400Mbs, and a 5400RPM drive will run 3Gbs, how will a 7200RMP offer more performance when the bottleneck is in the FW400 itself? In any system, one needs to look at where the bottleneck is, and iJohn's guess passed the common sense test with me. An SSD addressed through FW400 will perform no better. Definitely faster? You sure? On Jan 24, 2:51 pm, Kris Tilford ktilfo...@cox.net wrote: On Jan 23, 2011, at 9:51 AM, iJohn wrote: That's a hard one to guess at. But my guess would be no, I don't think you'd see a gain. Or if there was one, it would not be as large as you hoped. What? Why are you guessing? These are measurable facts. Guessing about things isn't acceptable. Either you know some factual information or factual reasoning about a topic, or you don't. In this case, YOU DON'T, so you shouldn't have posted. I suppose it's possible that a 7200 RPM drive would still appear to perform faster than an internal 4200 RPM, but I wouldn't count on it. A 7,200 RPM HD is DEFINITELY faster in a FW400 enclosure than either a 5,400 RPM or 4,200 RPM. Have you ever even booted from Firewire on a daily basis? Have you made measurements? Have you streamed video off a Firewire enclosure? Obviously your experience is limited. More to the point, I feel fairly confident that you would not really be able to tell the difference between a (recent) SATA 5400 versus 7200 when connected via Firewire 400. BASED UPON WHAT FACTS? In my experience MEASURING the difference in speed, the difference is LARGE and EASY to tell the difference between. In other words, if you're going to go with a Firewire 400 external drive I'd suggest going with a 5400 drive and save a few bucks. With the recent improvements in platter bit densities over the last year or two, the throughput of 5400 drives has increased noticeably. The difference between 5400 and 7200 is not as noticeable especially when you put that 400 Mbps cap on the drive throughput. It's the HD ITSELF that's the limiting factor here, NOT the Firewire connection. Any gain you make to the HD will transfer directly, arithmetically to the Mini's HD performance. === On Jan 23, 2011, at 10:22 AM, John Carmonne wrote: OK then let me ask is the internal drive Bus 167 speed going to be faster than the same drive connected to the FireWire 400? A 2.5 HD connected to the internal ATA bus is going to be slightly faster than any HD connected via Firewire 400, but if the internal 2.5 HD is the standard OEM 5,400 RPM and the external FW400 is a 3.5 7,200 RPM the difference will be minimalized substantially. The fastest you can achieve will be a SSD connected to the internal ATA; followed by a 7,200RPM 2.5 or 5,400RPM 2.5 connected to the internal ATA; followed by a 7,200RPM 3.5 connected via Firewire 400, and then any slower HDs connected via FW400. And does that relate to overall performance of my G4 PPC Mac Mini 1.25? The best thing you can do to your 1.25GHz Mini for performance is to overclock it to 1.42GHz. It's a simple overclock IF you can see well, the resistors are TINY. I never soldered mine, they were too small for my soldering ability. Instead, to remove one I cut the solder with an exacto knife (any tiny sharp knife or razor blade might work?), and to add one I used conductive circuit paint using a toothpick. It's a free 15% speed gain with no downside unless you screw-up and botch the job. As Newertech and several other companies noticed, there isn't much downside to booting a PPC Mini from a 3.5 7,200RPM HD instead of the 2.5 5,400 RPM OEM drive, and the proliferation of MiniStack enclosures is a testament to that concept. I've been using my Mini as a media-center computer and I'm trying to squeeze every last bit of performance from it, so I boot from a small internal 2.5 7,200 RPM drive and use a 1 TB Apple Time Capsule for media storage, but this isn't much better than booting from a MiniStack or any good Firewire enclosure with a modern 3.5 HD. Note, there is NO difference in speed between a 3.5 ATA133/150 HD and a 3.5 SATA HD inside a FW400 enclosure. If an SATA HD enclosure are cheaper, that's the best deal, but if you have an older ATA 7,200 RPM HD enclosure it should be identical in performance. There are some Firewire 400 enclosures with poor performance chipsets, but these are rare in more modern enclosures. Definitely avoid anything by GeneSys Logic which will NOT work. Oxford is best, and anything by a HD manufacturer is good. The 1.25 Mini is going to be a little bit too slow to play modern HD video smoothly, the bottleneck isn't the HD, it's the Radeon 9200 video which unfortunately can't be upgraded at all, and severely limits these older PPC Minis. I suspect slower G4 PowerMacs with
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
Ok now I'm lost. I thought Kris was referring to IDE not SATA. SATA II and SATA III in a Firewire enclosure will of course run slower than plugged directly into a SATA II or SATA III Controller. From: JoeTaxpayer joetaxpaye...@gmail.com To: G-Group g3-5-list@googlegroups.com Cc: Sent: Monday, January 24, 2011 4:46 PM Subject: Re: Mac Mini HDD speed Kris, why so hostile? Since FW400 is limited to 400Mbs, and a 5400RPM drive will run 3Gbs, how will a 7200RMP offer more performance when the bottleneck is in the FW400 itself? In any system, one needs to look at where the bottleneck is, and iJohn's guess passed the common sense test with me. An SSD addressed through FW400 will perform no better. Definitely faster? You sure? On Jan 24, 2:51 pm, Kris Tilford ktilfo...@cox.net wrote: On Jan 23, 2011, at 9:51 AM, iJohn wrote: That's a hard one to guess at. But my guess would be no, I don't think you'd see a gain. Or if there was one, it would not be as large as you hoped. What? Why are you guessing? These are measurable facts. Guessing about things isn't acceptable. Either you know some factual information or factual reasoning about a topic, or you don't. In this case, YOU DON'T, so you shouldn't have posted. I suppose it's possible that a 7200 RPM drive would still appear to perform faster than an internal 4200 RPM, but I wouldn't count on it. A 7,200 RPM HD is DEFINITELY faster in a FW400 enclosure than either a 5,400 RPM or 4,200 RPM. Have you ever even booted from Firewire on a daily basis? Have you made measurements? Have you streamed video off a Firewire enclosure? Obviously your experience is limited. More to the point, I feel fairly confident that you would not really be able to tell the difference between a (recent) SATA 5400 versus 7200 when connected via Firewire 400. BASED UPON WHAT FACTS? In my experience MEASURING the difference in speed, the difference is LARGE and EASY to tell the difference between. In other words, if you're going to go with a Firewire 400 external drive I'd suggest going with a 5400 drive and save a few bucks. With the recent improvements in platter bit densities over the last year or two, the throughput of 5400 drives has increased noticeably. The difference between 5400 and 7200 is not as noticeable especially when you put that 400 Mbps cap on the drive throughput. It's the HD ITSELF that's the limiting factor here, NOT the Firewire connection. Any gain you make to the HD will transfer directly, arithmetically to the Mini's HD performance. === On Jan 23, 2011, at 10:22 AM, John Carmonne wrote: OK then let me ask is the internal drive Bus 167 speed going to be faster than the same drive connected to the FireWire 400? A 2.5 HD connected to the internal ATA bus is going to be slightly faster than any HD connected via Firewire 400, but if the internal 2.5 HD is the standard OEM 5,400 RPM and the external FW400 is a 3.5 7,200 RPM the difference will be minimalized substantially. The fastest you can achieve will be a SSD connected to the internal ATA; followed by a 7,200RPM 2.5 or 5,400RPM 2.5 connected to the internal ATA; followed by a 7,200RPM 3.5 connected via Firewire 400, and then any slower HDs connected via FW400. And does that relate to overall performance of my G4 PPC Mac Mini 1.25? The best thing you can do to your 1.25GHz Mini for performance is to overclock it to 1.42GHz. It's a simple overclock IF you can see well, the resistors are TINY. I never soldered mine, they were too small for my soldering ability. Instead, to remove one I cut the solder with an exacto knife (any tiny sharp knife or razor blade might work?), and to add one I used conductive circuit paint using a toothpick. It's a free 15% speed gain with no downside unless you screw-up and botch the job. As Newertech and several other companies noticed, there isn't much downside to booting a PPC Mini from a 3.5 7,200RPM HD instead of the 2.5 5,400 RPM OEM drive, and the proliferation of MiniStack enclosures is a testament to that concept. I've been using my Mini as a media-center computer and I'm trying to squeeze every last bit of performance from it, so I boot from a small internal 2.5 7,200 RPM drive and use a 1 TB Apple Time Capsule for media storage, but this isn't much better than booting from a MiniStack or any good Firewire enclosure with a modern 3.5 HD. Note, there is NO difference in speed between a 3.5 ATA133/150 HD and a 3.5 SATA HD inside a FW400 enclosure. If an SATA HD enclosure are cheaper, that's the best deal, but if you have an older ATA 7,200 RPM HD enclosure it should be identical in performance. There are some Firewire 400 enclosures with poor performance chipsets, but these are rare in more modern enclosures. Definitely avoid anything by GeneSys Logic
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
On Jan 22, 3:58 pm, peterh...@cruzio.com wrote: Cyberguys also has 2.5 drives, but all of the drives in this size, IDE/ATA and SATA, are 5400 RPM. The 2.5IDE/ATA drives are Western Digital and come in 80GB ($57), 160GB ($72) and 250GB ($88) capacities. Micro Center stocks WD ATAs in up to and including 320 GB. Micro Center's price on 320s is about $100 ... their price on 160s is about $65. Amazon offers the 5400RPM WD 320GB 2.5 drive for $90 with free shipping. http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-2-5-Inch-Notebook-WD3200BEVE/dp/ B001SQH1DY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8s=miscellaneousqid=1295905894sr=8-1 I think I found it one or two other places for about $10 less, but the other places seemed to be offering OEM drives which did not include Western Digital's 3 year warranty. The item description for this drive on Amazon's site claims it has the WD warranty, so even if WD doesn't honor it, one could complain to Amazon. I'm pretty sure there was a 500GB 2.5 PATA drive from WD for a little while, but no one seems to have stock any more. Unless WD announced it and never shipped it? I bought one (the 320GB) for my G4 Mini, but I have not installed it yet. It's going to cause a cascade of upgrades which I'm not quite ready for yet. Jeff Walther -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
If putting it into the mini, it needed to be PATA, but why bother buying a drive that's probably twice the price in an old format to put into a FW enclosure? On Jan 24, 4:51 pm, Albert Carter slvrmoonti...@yahoo.com wrote: Ok now I'm lost. I thought Kris was referring to IDE not SATA. SATA II and SATA III in a Firewire enclosure will of course run slower than plugged directly into a SATA II or SATA III Controller. From: JoeTaxpayer joetaxpaye...@gmail.com To: G-Group g3-5-list@googlegroups.com Cc: Sent: Monday, January 24, 2011 4:46 PM Subject: Re: Mac Mini HDD speed Kris, why so hostile? Since FW400 is limited to 400Mbs, and a 5400RPM drive will run 3Gbs, how will a 7200RMP offer more performance when the bottleneck is in the FW400 itself? In any system, one needs to look at where the bottleneck is, and iJohn's guess passed the common sense test with me. An SSD addressed through FW400 will perform no better. Definitely faster? You sure? On Jan 24, 2:51 pm, Kris Tilford ktilfo...@cox.net wrote: On Jan 23, 2011, at 9:51 AM, iJohn wrote: That's a hard one to guess at. But my guess would be no, I don't think you'd see a gain. Or if there was one, it would not be as large as you hoped. What? Why are you guessing? These are measurable facts. Guessing about things isn't acceptable. Either you know some factual information or factual reasoning about a topic, or you don't. In this case, YOU DON'T, so you shouldn't have posted. I suppose it's possible that a 7200 RPM drive would still appear to perform faster than an internal 4200 RPM, but I wouldn't count on it. A 7,200 RPM HD is DEFINITELY faster in a FW400 enclosure than either a 5,400 RPM or 4,200 RPM. Have you ever even booted from Firewire on a daily basis? Have you made measurements? Have you streamed video off a Firewire enclosure? Obviously your experience is limited. More to the point, I feel fairly confident that you would not really be able to tell the difference between a (recent) SATA 5400 versus 7200 when connected via Firewire 400. BASED UPON WHAT FACTS? In my experience MEASURING the difference in speed, the difference is LARGE and EASY to tell the difference between. In other words, if you're going to go with a Firewire 400 external drive I'd suggest going with a 5400 drive and save a few bucks. With the recent improvements in platter bit densities over the last year or two, the throughput of 5400 drives has increased noticeably. The difference between 5400 and 7200 is not as noticeable especially when you put that 400 Mbps cap on the drive throughput. It's the HD ITSELF that's the limiting factor here, NOT the Firewire connection. Any gain you make to the HD will transfer directly, arithmetically to the Mini's HD performance. === On Jan 23, 2011, at 10:22 AM, John Carmonne wrote: OK then let me ask is the internal drive Bus 167 speed going to be faster than the same drive connected to the FireWire 400? A 2.5 HD connected to the internal ATA bus is going to be slightly faster than any HD connected via Firewire 400, but if the internal 2.5 HD is the standard OEM 5,400 RPM and the external FW400 is a 3.5 7,200 RPM the difference will be minimalized substantially. The fastest you can achieve will be a SSD connected to the internal ATA; followed by a 7,200RPM 2.5 or 5,400RPM 2.5 connected to the internal ATA; followed by a 7,200RPM 3.5 connected via Firewire 400, and then any slower HDs connected via FW400. And does that relate to overall performance of my G4 PPC Mac Mini 1.25? The best thing you can do to your 1.25GHz Mini for performance is to overclock it to 1.42GHz. It's a simple overclock IF you can see well, the resistors are TINY. I never soldered mine, they were too small for my soldering ability. Instead, to remove one I cut the solder with an exacto knife (any tiny sharp knife or razor blade might work?), and to add one I used conductive circuit paint using a toothpick. It's a free 15% speed gain with no downside unless you screw-up and botch the job. As Newertech and several other companies noticed, there isn't much downside to booting a PPC Mini from a 3.5 7,200RPM HD instead of the 2.5 5,400 RPM OEM drive, and the proliferation of MiniStack enclosures is a testament to that concept. I've been using my Mini as a media-center computer and I'm trying to squeeze every last bit of performance from it, so I boot from a small internal 2.5 7,200 RPM drive and use a 1 TB Apple Time Capsule for media storage, but this isn't much better than booting from a MiniStack or any good Firewire enclosure with a modern 3.5 HD. Note, there is NO difference in speed between a 3.5 ATA133/150 HD and a 3.5 SATA HD inside a FW400 enclosure. If an SATA HD enclosure
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
On Jan 24, 2011, at 3:46 PM, JoeTaxpayer wrote: why so hostile? Tired of dealing with guessing. Definitely faster? You sure? Yes, I'm sure. To confirm that from a 2nd source, look to the original poster who says: After a bunch of testing speeds not only is the external 7200 IDE FW 400 HDD making the 1.25 Mini run faster than the ATA 4200 but Tiger is about 25% faster than Leopard. Notice the word testing. I've also done this testing myself. Yes, I am sure. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
At 12:06 PM -0800 1/24/2011, peterh...@cruzio.com wrote: Yet, the average throughput capacity of most drive electronics and host bus adapter electronics remained essentially the same, at about 40 megabytes/second, MAXIMUM. This is not about raw or sustained throughput. If all people did was a single latency/seek cycle then read or write whole cylinders,,, then the rotational speed of a drive would not matter so much. The bottleneck would be the interfaces and buffers. But that's just not the case. People rarely read/write whole tracks at once on a HD. They grab a few sectors then WAIT for that latency and seek cycle, grab a few other sectors then WAIT for that latency and seek cycle, grab a few other sectors then WAIT for that latency and seek cycle, etc. Those WAIT cycles are soo long, the net effect is that it doesn't matter how fast the actual read/write time is on the drive, or the interface speeds (once they're fast enough)... what matters is how long YOU are bored to death waiting for your system to gather all the data you need. A faster rotational speed = shorter latency = shorter wait times = higher performance. - Dan. -- - Psychoceramic Emeritus; South Jersey, USA, Earth. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
To be clear, you're talking PATA in the external FW enclosure, correct? In which case the numbers support your position. I don't know that it makes sense to go buy a PATA drive to load into an enclosure, one can buy a 1TB external for less than the 320GB PATA going into the FW box. An odd choice. On Jan 24, 5:53 pm, Kris Tilford ktilfo...@cox.net wrote: On Jan 24, 2011, at 3:46 PM, JoeTaxpayer wrote: why so hostile? Tired of dealing with guessing. Definitely faster? You sure? Yes, I'm sure. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
On Jan 24, 2011, at 7:17 PM, JoeTaxpayer wrote: To be clear, you're talking PATA in the external FW enclosure, correct? No. It doesn't make any difference. It can be SATA I, SATA II, PATA133, or PATA150 . They're all going to be roughly the same speed as single HDs. A newer 7,200 RPM PATA HD is generally going to be a faster HD than any 5,400 RPM SATA HD. We're talking about SINGLE HDs, not RAID HDs. For normal SINGLE HD setups, it's the rotational speed and the latency of the HD that are important, NOT the connection speed to the computer. The only exception would be for extremely old, slow connections like USB 1.1 or older SCSI. For modern ATA, SATA, eSATA, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, FW400, FW800, FW1600, or FW3200 with a SINGLE HD there's not going to be much noticeable difference in performance for the user. The factor with the single greatest influence will be the HD itself. Its rotational speed is directly proportional to its latency. I learned this THE HARD WAY, I actually BOUGHT FW800 enclosures expecting them to be TWICE AS FAST as my old FW400 enclosures, but when I TESTED THEM, they were the SAME SPEED, not because they're not CAPABLE of twice as fast, but because you'd need a RAID of multiple HDs to saturate the connection. This whole 1.5 Gbps or 3.0 Gbps thing for individual HDs is 100% hype. No single HD can sustain anything near that rate. Mechanical LATENCY is the reason. It doesn't matter how fast the electronics can move bits when the mechanical parts can't move equally as fast. HD RPM is one direct method to lower latency. Like Dan said, it's the WAIT cycles that are the killer here, not the speed of the connection. To quote Dan, A faster rotational speed = shorter latency = shorter wait times = higher performance. The connection speed isn't important, it's NOT THE LIMITING FACTOR for a single modern HDs. Sorry for being so hostile today. I don't like guessing about facts. I don't like using advertising hype as a substitute for reality. I'm a little frustrated and my patience is thin. Too much snow, too much cold, too much cabin fever. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 3:36 PM, John Carmonne carmo...@aol.com wrote: If I use an external 3.5 7200 RPM via Firewire 400 will I gain speed over the internal HDD 4200 RPM in my Mac Mini? That's a hard one to guess at. But my guess would be no, I don't think you'd see a gain. Or if there was one, it would not be as large as you hoped. When you connect via Firewire 400 you will never be able to move data faster than Firewire 400's 400Mbps bus speed. I suppose it's possible that a 7200 RPM drive would still appear to perform faster than an internal 4200 RPM, but I wouldn't count on it. More to the point, I feel fairly confident that you would not really be able to tell the difference between a (recent) SATA 5400 versus 7200 when connected via Firewire 400. In other words, if you're going to go with a Firewire 400 external drive I'd suggest going with a 5400 drive and save a few bucks. With the recent improvements in platter bit densities over the last year or two, the throughput of 5400 drives has increased noticeably. The difference between 5400 and 7200 is not as noticeable especially when you put that 400 Mbps cap on the drive throughput. On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 4:28 PM, John Carmonne carmo...@aol.com wrote: Newegg has a large selection of them including large accompanying prices. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENEN=18120%20600038505IsNodeId=1name=PATA Anyone care to do the math on what percentage of the current market price of a PPC Mac Mini those PATA SDDs might be? ;-) It is NOT how fast any particular component of a system may be which determines the performance of a system. It's the sum of all the components ... the system itself ... and how they are used ... the applications and OS. In my opinion buying an SSD for a PPC Mini is just throwing money away. If you can afford to throw money at an SSD you'd probably get more bang for your buck by upgrading to a later, Intel version of the Mac Mini. But to each their own ... -irrational john -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
On Jan 22, 2011, at 9:28 AM, John Carmonne wrote: I recently got a Mac Mini PPC 1.25 with a 4200 RPM ATA 40 GB HDD. Is there an advantage to putting in a 7200 RPM ATA HDD? I know they're a little scarce but if it increases performance it's worth a try. yes, in my experience with laptops, going from 4200 to 7200 is a sizeable boost in performance. -- Bruce Johnson University of Arizona College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
John, The 7200 RPM drives have faster seek times. There may also be a higher Bus speed and a larger buffer, making data access, transfer and use by software more rapid. So far as price, cyberguys.com has Western Digital IDE/ATA drives in 3.5 diameter. These have the 7200 RPM speed you're looking for and come in 160GB ($53), 250GB ($65) and 500GB ($85) capacities. Hope that helps! I recently got a Mac Mini PPC 1.25 with a 4200 RPM ATA 40 GB HDD. Is there an advantage to putting in a 7200 RPM ATA HDD? I know they're a little scarce but if it increases performance it's worth a try. John Carmonne Yorba Linda CA 92886 USA Sent from my MBP -- Bill Bunny Kuhlman -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
The 7200 RPM drives have faster seek times. There may also be a higher Bus speed and a larger buffer, making data access, transfer and use by software more rapid. So far as price, cyberguys.com has Western Digital IDE/ATA drives in 3.5 diameter. These have the 7200 RPM speed you're looking for and come in 160GB ($53), 250GB ($65) and 500GB ($85) capacities. Hope that helps! There are not a lot of options in the 2.5 IDE form factor, which is what the early Minis require. As there are so few offerings still available in 2.5 IDE drives, you get what you can find. OWC probably has the widest offerings. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
For 2.5 why no use a SSD? On Jan 22, 1:21 pm, peterh...@cruzio.com wrote: The 7200 RPM drives have faster seek times. There may also be a higher Bus speed and a larger buffer, making data access, transfer and use by software more rapid. So far as price, cyberguys.com has Western Digital IDE/ATA drives in 3.5 diameter. These have the 7200 RPM speed you're looking for and come in 160GB ($53), 250GB ($65) and 500GB ($85) capacities. Hope that helps! There are not a lot of options in the 2.5 IDE form factor, which is what the early Minis require. As there are so few offerings still available in 2.5 IDE drives, you get what you can find. OWC probably has the widest offerings. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
Cost? For 2.5 why no use a SSD? -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
My experience with PowerBooks was that going fron 4200 to 7200 had a noticeable increase in speed and a noticeable decrease in battery life. I think on a Mini you would like the results. On Jan 22, 2011, at 11:28 AM, John Carmonne carmo...@aol.com wrote: I recently got a Mac Mini PPC 1.25 with a 4200 RPM ATA 40 GB HDD. Is there an advantage to putting in a 7200 RPM ATA HDD? I know they're a little scarce but if it increases performance it's worth a try. John Carmonne Yorba Linda CA 92886 USA Sent from my MBP -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
On 2011/01/22 09:28, John Carmonne so eloquently wrote: I recently got a Mac Mini PPC 1.25 with a 4200 RPM ATA 40 GB HDD. Is there an advantage to putting in a 7200 RPM ATA HDD? I know they're a little scarce but if it increases performance it's worth a try. My only concern would be heat. I don't know how good the Mini's cooling system is designed and how hard you are going to be running it so it's hard to say if it will be an issue or not. Tina -- iMac 20 USB 2 1.25GHz G4 2GB RAM GeForce FX 5200 Ultra 64MB 10.4.11 PB G4 15 HR-DLSD 1.67GHz G4 2GB RAM Radeon 9700 128MB VRAM 10.5.8 Mac Pro Mid-2010 2.8 GHz QC 8 GB RAM Radeon HD 5770 1 GB VRAM 10.6.6 -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
Cyberguys also has 2.5 drives, but all of the drives in this size, IDE/ATA and SATA, are 5400 RPM. The 2.5IDE/ATA drives are Western Digital and come in 80GB ($57), 160GB ($72) and 250GB ($88) capacities. Because of the smaller diameter, it seems as though 5400 RPM on a 2.5 drive would be roughly equivalent to a 3.5 drive rotating at 7200 RPM. Bus speed and buffer size are the same for both diameters. The 7200 RPM drives have faster seek times. There may also be a higher Bus speed and a larger buffer, making data access, transfer and use by software more rapid. So far as price, cyberguys.com has Western Digital IDE/ATA drives in 3.5 diameter. These have the 7200 RPM speed you're looking for and come in 160GB ($53), 250GB ($65) and 500GB ($85) capacities. Hope that helps! There are not a lot of options in the 2.5 IDE form factor, which is what the early Minis require. As there are so few offerings still available in 2.5 IDE drives, you get what you can find. OWC probably has the widest offerings. -- Bill Bunny Kuhlman -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
On Jan 22, 2011, at 12:22 PM, JoeTaxpayer wrote: For 2.5 why no use a SSD? Because ATA SSD's are small, and insanely expensive, and lightness isn't the prime requirement of a Mini. -- Bruce Johnson Wherever you go, there you are B. Banzai, PhD -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
That particular Mini uses PATA interface instead of SATA. Finding an SSD in PATA could be problematic. On 1/22/2011 1:22 PM, JoeTaxpayer wrote: For 2.5 why no use a SSD? On Jan 22, 1:21 pm, peterh...@cruzio.com wrote: The 7200 RPM drives have faster seek times. There may also be a higher Bus speed and a larger buffer, making data access, transfer and use by software more rapid. So far as price, cyberguys.com has Western Digital IDE/ATA drives in 3.5 diameter. These have the 7200 RPM speed you're looking for and come in 160GB ($53), 250GB ($65) and 500GB ($85) capacities. Hope that helps! There are not a lot of options in the 2.5 IDE form factor, which is what the early Minis require. As there are so few offerings still available in 2.5 IDE drives, you get what you can find. OWC probably has the widest offerings. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
On Jan 22, 2011, at 12:20 PM, Bruce Johnson wrote: On Jan 22, 2011, at 12:22 PM, JoeTaxpayer wrote: For 2.5 why no use a SSD? Because ATA SSD's are small, and insanely expensive, and lightness isn't the prime requirement of a Mini. -- Bruce Johnson Wherever you go, there you are B. Banzai, PhD If I use an external 3.5 7200 RPM via Firewire 400 will I gain speed over the internal HDD 4200 RPM in my Mac Mini? John Carmonne Yorba Linda CA 92886 USA Sent from my MBP -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
I think OWC makes a SSD with a PATA interface. That particular Mini uses PATA interface instead of SATA. Finding an SSD in PATA could be problematic. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
Is ther IDE 2.5 SSD's? or for that matter is ther IDE SSD's period? Jeff On Jan 22, 2011, at 11:30 AM, Alex Barnes wrote: Cost? For 2.5 why no use a SSD? -- -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
On Jan 22, 2011, at 12:03 PM, Jason Brown wrote: That particular Mini uses PATA interface instead of SATA. Finding an SSD in PATA could be problematic. Newegg has a large selection of them including large accompanying prices. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENEN=18120%20600038505IsNodeId=1name=PATA John Carmonne Yorba Linda CA 92886 USA Sent from my MBP -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
Cyberguys also has 2.5 drives, but all of the drives in this size, IDE/ATA and SATA, are 5400 RPM. The 2.5IDE/ATA drives are Western Digital and come in 80GB ($57), 160GB ($72) and 250GB ($88) capacities. Micro Center stocks WD ATAs in up to and including 320 GB. Micro Center's price on 320s is about $100 ... their price on 160s is about $65. Still, not a lot of options for internal storage on early Minis. A place named iFixIt stocks a drive cage and adapter which replaces the ATA CD or DVD drive with a second hard drive. Doesn't come with any of the required mounting screws, however. Still, you are limited to 320 GB as the adapter is ATA-to-ATA. If using Firewire, there are options available up to 2000 GB. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: Mac Mini HDD speed
A place named iFixIt stocks a drive cage and adapter which replaces the ATA CD or DVD drive with a second hard drive. Doesn't come with any of the required mounting screws, however. There are a number of folks on ePrey (sic) which are selling a similar product, but is SATA-to-SATA, for later Minis and others which use 12.7mm (1/2) slim optical drives. Those folks, who ship from Hong Kong, include screws! -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
