Upgrading to SATA? |
October, 14, 2003 1:55 AM |
avit |
I'm wondering about upgrading the storage in my 7600 from the stock SCSI to Serial ATA. Does anyone have experience with this in OldWorld Macs? I'd like to know if it's worth the investment to do it, and if there are any pitfalls with this upgrade. I'm trying to think forward, and since SATA seems to be the new standard I'd like to jump directly to that instead of ATA, if I decide to switch. What can I expect in terms of performance improvement, relative to onboard SCSI? Is an OldWorld Mac bootable from SATA? In OS9? OSX? Does the 8GB limit apply? I'd appreciate your input. |
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RE: Upgrading to SATA? |
October, 22, 2003 7:47 PM |
smwalker |
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My 7500 w/ 7600 mobo is all SCSI, from Apple. I have a Seagate 37 gb 50 pin drive w/ the stock 4 gb scsi drive. I don't wish or intend to go to ATA on this machine. Installation of OSX w/ XPF is a dream. It has 776 gb ram and a g3 500 mhz Sonnet card. It isn't as fast as my 9600, but it is reliable and fast enough. In my 9600 w/ g4 800 mhz Sonnet I installed a SIIG PCI card, with a 120 gb ata hard drive which is recognized as scsi by ASP, but I was not able to directly install OSX. I had to install to the stock SCSI 4 gb hard drive and then clone the install to the ide hard disk using carbon copy cloner. I have a PC with SCSI hard drives, and in spite of the allure of SATA RAID IDE stripe 0, I'm sticking with SCSI on all these machines for a variety of reasons. |
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RE: Upgrading to SATA? |
October, 22, 2003 8:09 AM |
jseibyl |
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BTW, my numbers are conservitive, you can get faster transfers from the expensive scsi cards (29160N) and 15K drives, of course, but as you mentioned they are expensive. |
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avit |
October, 22, 2003 8:06 AM |
jseibyl |
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this is from SATA.org.... Serial ATA technology will deliver 1.5 Gbps (150 MB/sec) of performance to each drive within a disk drive array. This is of course dependent upon the specific system. Your old world MAc has a mobo bus speed of ~50 mhz compared to the new g5 @ 1ghz. Here is where you will see a bottleneck. Most old world machines can have drives matched with fast scsi cards and deliver perhps 40 mb/sec. My drives are around 20 mb/sec, one is closer to 30 which is good even for video at full frame rates. I am not sure how much faster you will get with SATA, as the system bus speed is your bottleneck. The theoretical limit to the PCI bus is 133 mb/sec, but we all have devices in several slots, so that limit is more on paper than actual reality. It probally be best just to go FW if you don't want to jerk around with scsi (yes, I LOVE scsi). Get an external FW drive, and you will get a fast transfer ~30 mb/sec perhpas, that you can move to another machine without any difficulty. I have a feeling that you might be dissapointed with SATA on these machines. |
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RE: Upgrading to SATA? |
October, 22, 2003 8:02 AM |
gregoryy |
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SATA is still very very new. But there are lots of folks that use SCSI on G4 systems and some that wanted to put their 15K SCSI drives inside those G5's are finding they can't. You just don't know the same people ;) The OEM UL3D would be a good card, BUT... not in vintage. The UL2D last year was a good working solution and they were $29, then with large demand, OWC upped price to $49. They've had some 2940U2B cards, 3950 cards just recently. With 36GB drives delivering 65MB/sec and costing just $155, they can be a good value with controller, just be sure to get a decent cable and active terminator. FireWire is one option that is "universal" but isn't bootable, at least not normally, though XPF 3 could change even that. PATA is the best in economy of storage and performance though. Hitachi just stole the crown away from WD's Caviar SE drives with their 7K250. That didn't stop me from ordering a new 15K Atlas though :-) If you wanted to stay with SCSI, the Adaptec 29160/29160N works on Vintage up to G5. Someone put in a good word for the ACard LVD U160 SCSI card, too, though. |
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RE: Upgrading to SATA? |
October, 21, 2003 7:17 PM |
avit |
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Thanks for the replies everyone, but I haven't been able to make a decision from all this. Basically, I'm hesitant to pour any more money into my old Mac, but I'd like to know if there is a cheap solution for faster storage. What I have now is a 36GB Seagate SCSI drive, 68 pin necked-down to 50 pin, so I assume that I'm not using it to its potential speed. However, SCSI remains expensive, and I don't know if upgrading to a fast SCSI card is the way I want to go. I think I would rather move to an IDE or SATA card, that way I can just plug and play my drive with any other machine out there, or move it to a newer machine. I'm the only guy I know who still runs on SCSI. Except for specialised situations, nobody uses SCSI in current hardware anymore. I thought about SATA because that seems to be the current trend, but it seems that not many of you old Mac heads have gone that way yet. I realize that I'd pay a little more for it than for ATA/133, but I'm trying to think of where things will be a year from now. Will everyone be moving towards SATA? Can anyone answer my original questions? Mainly, how much faster is SATA than onboard SCSI in my 7600 (10mb/s nominal), and can I boot OS X from it? |
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RE: Upgrading to SATA? |
October, 21, 2003 3:35 AM |
willschou1 |
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If you had read the other posts you would have known the SGII/Acard doesn't have the 8 GB limit as it is seen as a SCSI drive. But then you should already know that so why are you posting wrong info? |
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RE: Upgrading to SATA? |
October, 21, 2003 3:20 AM |
john.england |
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To the guy installing a 120GB Maxtor in his 9600, did you partition the drive? On old world machines you have the 8gig limit remember? SCSI drives have no limit to their partition sizes. |
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RE: Upgrading to SATA? |
October, 20, 2003 12:34 AM |
chibi_delenn |
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SATA isn't going to get you any better than an ATA/133 or ATA/133 RAID card in oldworld macs. PCI bandwidth on anything less than the G5 is going to be the bottleneck, especially if you have a video card in there as well. You may as well save some money and just get normal ATA/133. At least with that you can put more drives in, whereas SATA is single drive per channel. - Chibi Delennâ„¢ |
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RE: Upgrading to SATA? |
October, 18, 2003 11:46 PM |
AndreH |
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Since I'm having trouble with the OS X portion of the question I will hold off on answering that part of it but I will tell you that since I put the 120GB ATA drive in my OldWorld Powermac 9600 I've never been happier. Under OS 9.1 it boots up just fine. It actually boots up faster than the old scsi drive I had in there before which was 110GB smaller. Keep in mind I had to put a SIIG ATA 100/133 card in to allow it to work. Other than that it's been a great. Just wish I could get OS X to work... |
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RE: 9600 + SIIG |
October, 18, 2003 11:37 PM |
AndreH |
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Appreciate the feedback. However your assumption that I couldn't use Drive Setup from OS 9.1 is incorrect. Everything is perfect while using OS 9.1. And I mean perfect. I can partition the drive at will. The computer itself runs much smoother and faster than it used to. Originally I partitioned the drive into three partitions. One 8GB partion for OSX, one 8GB partition for OS 9.1, and the remainder for files and apps. OS X installer would not recognise the drive. After that (just for fun) I re-did the partitioning so that there was only one partition. Same result. OS Installer simply can't see the drive under any conditions. I have another 20GB internal. OS X will install to that however I can't get past the log in stage (But that's a different thread)so I don't know if OS X will recognise the ATA drive once OS X is up and running. |
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RE: Upgrading to SATA? |
October, 18, 2003 9:12 PM |
willschou1 |
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Should we change the subject to "Hurray for SCSI !" ? I just love how so few of the replys are on subject. The poster no doubt was hoping to hear something about SATA! The SGII card is made by ACARD and is seen as SCSI. So no need to partition. The last person who had issues with installing OSX on a SGII/Acard (like maybe 2 weeks or so ago here) was having the problem because the drive needs to be setup using Drivesetup in OS 9.x . It is possible to setup using OSX disk utiliiies but you need to check include OS 9 drivers or something like that. |
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RE: 9600 + SIIG |
October, 18, 2003 2:44 PM |
gregoryy |
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Does the SIIG show drives as "ATA?" If so you need to partition it to install. When you say OS X didn't recognize the drive, that says to me that you couldn't use Disk Utility to Partition it. I think there's something wrong with FirmTek based cards and even some of the others, that performance drops off so bad. For $39 + cost of adapter, you can pick up 9GB Atlas 10K II (8MB cache, formats to 8GB, makes a nice OS X boot drive, even on native SCSI bus) www.hypermicro.com under SCSI. |
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RE: Upgrading to SATA? |
October, 18, 2003 1:42 PM |
AndreH |
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If it helps I just put a 120GB Maxtor in my stock 9600. Drive was cheap ($79 after $30 rebate)but OS X installer won't recognize it. Works great under OS 9.1. I'm theorizing that OS X installer would recognize an internal scsi drive but I wasn't willing loosen up the wallet for one. I'd be interested if anyone knows of a cheaper place to buy drives. The cheapest place I know of is Fry's Electronics but not every city has one. Summary: ATA drive under OS 9.1 in a stock 9600 is a dream but still working out the bugs of getting OS X on it. By the way I used a SIIG ATA upgrade card. No problems (yet). Hope this helps. |
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RE: Upgrading to SATA? |
October, 15, 2003 5:22 PM |
gregoryy |
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SCSI price prices have actually never been better.... http://www.hypermicro.com/store/scsihdd.htm The Raptor has been through a number of firmware updates. they were buggy and they still "favor" disk writes over reads. Some places sell the 36GB for $112-119, they were ~$139 which is almost what you pay for the Cheetah ($159). With SCSI, its the "other stuff" that adds to the bill, but you find the stuff last for yrs. I think SATA will replace ATA and low-end SCSI storage, even in some light server work. |
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RE: Upgrading to SATA? |
October, 15, 2003 5:19 PM |
john.england |
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SCSI prices may be outrageous to you, but you can't deny their transfer rates and reliability. I work with very large music files and it really pays to spend the extra $$$ for peace of mind. |
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RE: Upgrading to SATA? |
October, 15, 2003 4:41 PM |
willschou1 |
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Thanks for taking the time to reply. OWC also sells the Firm Tek card and basicly says works in any Mac with a PCI slot. I wish I'd known the Seagate Barr IV were dog slow...but at least I got them for a good price. I'll have to move my Quantum drive to my boot drive at some point. No way am I going to pay for outragous SCSI drive prices. |
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RE: Upgrading to SATA? |
October, 15, 2003 9:26 AM |
gregoryy |
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Seagate IV drive had troubles, especially in RAID configurations. They tend to be slow in ATA but the Seagate name folks trust. If you do get another drive, check the Drive Performance DB for comparisons and reviews at www.storagereview.com - or just about any new drive will do best possible in that system. I was actually disgusted with 10K Cheetah two years ago after hearing so much good only to see it has 4MB cache, 33-35MB/sec out of their SCSI drive, when my Atlas 10K IIs at the time had 8MB/sec and were turning in 41MB/sec under heavy use. My Atlas 10K IV beats the Cheetah X15.2 models, too. I've had Atlas 10K IIIs, Cheetahs, IBM, something to play with and try to get some sppeeeed out of. PS: SeriTek/1S2 is a PCI 2.2 card. Not 2.1. Some cards will show PCI 2.2 (2.3?) and 1999 standard support. Our Macs have PC 2.1, and even then there are wide variations even Rev C Beige has improved PCI support than Rev A. |
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RE: Upgrading to SATA? |
October, 15, 2003 8:44 AM |
gregoryy |
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I had the privilage of trying out the FirmTek SATA card for MacGurus before they could begin selling it, as well as to test it with SoftRAID 3 over the summer. I used a 7300, beige G3, and B&W. If you look at the SATA FAQ at http://www.macgurus.com and the RAID DB at the site, you'll see some but not all of the numbers using various drives, systems, etc. No audio stuttering, but very slow performance. If you want a good/great ATA drive, Hitachi 7K250 took the crown away from WD with their new offerings. Check the reviews at www.storagereview.com Personally, in vintage, I prefer the $160 36GB Cheetah and ATTO PSC or something in Ultra2. Even at only 40MB/sec they still fly, thanks to 10K rpm and 8MB cache and optimized for random I/O. The Maxtor Atlas 10K IV is slightly faster, $160, and optimized for video editing applications, and my workhorse drive in B&W on 39160 using the 66 MHz slot where it gets 65MB/s at 65% full. 70MB/sec when empty. SATA works fine in Beige G3, Rev A or later, Rev C recommended. Any drive does piss poor in B&W using the 33 MHz slots - if you call 53MB/s 'poor' in that you can't get better than that even if you RAID 4 drives, just criminal. 66 MHz slot doesn't have that limitation. With SATA, each newer G4 got better performance, and even the G5 shows better yet than the MDD G4s. Which is why FirmTek 'recommends' later model G4s to get optimum. The Hitachi 7K250 is capable of 60MB/s in the proper system. |
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RE: Upgrading to SATA? |
October, 14, 2003 1:29 PM |
willschou1 |
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Are you saying this card is slower then an ATA /PCI card with IDE drive? My Quantum ide drive with Acard/Sonnet ATA/66 card gets 32-35 mb/sec but to my surprise my Seagate ide drive with even better specs only gets 22 mb/sec . I'm pretty happy with it and not willing to pay the high price of SCSI drives. Info at OWC and macgurus.com says the SATA cards work wih any PCI Macs. So where does your info come from ? |
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RE: Upgrading to SATA? |
October, 14, 2003 9:02 AM |
gregoryy |
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You won't get great mileage, not recommended by FirmTek, as you'll only see about 20-25MB/s though that is better then the onbaard FastSCSI - it feels slow. I installed in 7300 (G3/500). I prefer the ATTO PSC or even UL3S worked fine. It is an ATA type card. I wish the forum would allow URL UBB/HTML - I tried the link previously posted but nada. I'd say stick with ACard and ATA. |
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RE: Upgrading to SATA? |
October, 14, 2003 2:25 AM |
lyonsdj88 |
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Please see,: http://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/forum/ viewThread.cfm?&thread=2267&Topic=31&threadID=14044&ct=1#14044 ...... |