Hard Drive Performance - What to get

[bh]

I'm building a new box. QuickSilver DP 1 GB, 1.25 GB RAM. Boot / app drive is the hd that came with the box, an 80 GB something or other. System- 10.4.x (the highest),it's heavily customized. I removed a lot of items that don't need to be there for recording. It flies for what it is. Basic hardware > PCI 424, 1296 interface. Fastlane for MIDI devices. Hope this is the correct forum for this...

: for the data drive; I need to know if a bigger drive cache will make a difference in performance and how much. It should be at least 160 GB. it will used mostly for audio and maybe some video DP 5, iMovie, FinalCut HD DVD studio Pro etc. but it's mainly for music production like 99% of the time.

:arrow:I'm waiting to finish the setup because of the data drive question. RPM, cache. Any other input on the data drive is helpful.
TIA
BH

[Guitar Gaz]

I got a Sonnet Encore CPU upgrade card (my G4 has gone from 800mhz to 1.4 ghz) - its great.

[baanes]

A bigger drive won't necessarily be faster but newer drives are always faster than comparable older drives. You might as well get a big drive as they are relatively inexpensive ($100 for 250gb). Make sure you get one that spins at 7200rpm and has 8mb cache, though. http://www.storagereview.com is a site that reviews drives, you should be able to see comparisons of speed, noise, etc. there, although any manufacturer's fastest drives should be able to get you a fairly high track count.

[bh]

As far as the CPU upgrade goes, my thoughts on this are always the same. It is very expensive. You are not upgrading the bus speed. While you will see somewhat of a performance increase, Is it really worth that amount of $$? Also, if it is an Apple, you can't use the Apple hardware testers anymore. They are looking for the original CPU.
As far as the HD is concerend. I agree that 250 GB is probably the way to go. I have a question though. Do you think I'd be better of with a 16 MB cache ultra ATA instead? Maybe I'd get an 8 MB cache ultra ATA for the backup and a 16 MB cache ultra ATA drive for the data drive? Or maybe even 2 - 8 MB cache ultra ATA drives and split the audio files between the 2 drives as is suggested in the DP getting started guide? But if I went that route, then I'd need a PCI card to run the 2nd drive. my concern here is dealing with the PCI bus speed which is 33 MHz vs. the 133 MHz bus on the board. i don't know if the bus speed to the ATA drive is 133 MHz or what. Is an externally powered FireWire 400 box faster than internal? If it is, I believe that I could then do the split the audio data thingy.
On the other hand, am I over thinking this whole deal?
I appreciate all of your help. No suggestions are bad suggtestions. please keep em coming. I'd like to make a decision in a couple of days.
The specs of the the boot drive (comes built-in). IDE 80 GB, 2 MB cache, average sek time 8.2, 7200 RPM, sustained data rate 23.2- 48, interface transfer 100 16 heads. These boot drives don't have great specs, do they?

[emulatorloo]

As far as the HD is concerend. I agree that 250 GB is probably the way to go. I have a question though. Do you think I'd be better of with a 16 MB cache ultra ATA instead? Maybe I'd get an 8 MB cache ultra ATA for the backup and a 16 MB cache ultra ATA drive for the data drive? Or maybe even 2 - 8 MB cache ultra ATA drives and split the audio files between the 2 drives as is suggested in the DP getting started guide? But if I went that route, then I'd need a PCI card to run the 2nd drive.

Based on an article I read in Sound on Sound, July 2003 I chose a Hitachi/IBM Deskstar 120gb drive and put it on the internal ATA100 bus. They did a bunch of tests, in Logic, re track count. All drives were 7200 RPM, all with 8mb cache. The numbers were like this for a single drive using large files (that is, not little short snippets of audio) :

Western Digital max track count 39
hitachi/IBM deskstar max track count 60
Seagate max track count 38

Maybe they have this article online -- called "Speed Tests - IDE Drives for Music - RAID Arrays" The article has data for single drives, which is what I am quoting.

At the time I got a 120, as the first generation QS were limited to 120gb drives internally.

I use that as my project drive, and shuffle things off to an external firewire drive if need be.

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As to CPU upgrade, I have a dual gigadesigns. No problem. Tech Tool sees it just fine and can test it. When I bought it it made sense to get it. I was starting from a 733mhz single QS. So it brought me closer to what you have now. However with the prices of refurb G5's nowadays I might agree with you. Sort of depends on how many PCI cards you have that arent compatible with g5s.

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[bh]

Wow!!! great feedback.
Going to do a little research tomorrow taking into consideration your input. I was going to go 300GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ATA/6 7200RPM 16MB Buffer, 5yr Seagate Warranty (SEAST3300622A) for data and 250GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ATA/6 7200RPM 8MB Buffer w/5yr Seagate Warranty (SEAST3250824A) for backup and transfer between locations,
Now that I hear this news from you (although I've enver seen a seagate die (exept for right out of the box) and I've installed and fixed alot of them software-wise, I'm going to re-think my strategy. Maxtor seems to have alot more death stories than a dependable product should. I wonder if that's why they're so cheap.

I see why you went with the CPU upgrade. Still, if for some reason you had to use AHT it would not report properly. I'm sure tech tool tells you all you need to know. It just doesn't output the same error codes if any.

[emulatorloo]

Wow!!! great feedback.

I have had great luck with Western Digital and Seagate -- have had several Maxtor drives fail, but not recently. The IBM/Hitachi is great.

I found a link to that article on the web ----

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Jul03/a ... edtest.asp

It has all the tests -- both raid and single drives - basically his conclusion is that RAID doesn't really help much - single drive is ok. Lots of stuff re which bus to put audio drive on etc.

GOOD LUCK and let us know what happens.

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[bh]

Now i don't know where I'm at I'm afraid to make a decision. there is sooo much info out there, it would take months of research to make the best decision. I am truly lost i'm over thinking. I have not found anything talking about 16 MB cache being more advantageous than an 8 MB cache. More advice please and thank you everyone. This is such a great supportive site. I love it but I need to make a final decision so i can start recording on the new box.
I know I'm not doing a RAID. I don't know if there are more than 1 drive buses that I can hook the HD up to. I know there is a bus for the boot drive and i think the one for the DVD drive could be another bus. I've never seen anybody hook a HD up to that (other than a zip drive or something so I'm guessing the main bus I'm going to use is the Boot drive's bus. I think it's 133 MHz (if i read the apple specs correctly).

Here is what I've learned today. average seek time and cache size is not as important as the transfer rate. I'm going to look around using this premise. I hope it is correct. Now for my notes:
Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 HDT722525DLAT80
250 GB, 7200 RMP, 8 MB cache, Parallel-ATA Ultra-133, 2-disks, 4-heads Sustained data rate (MB/sec) 67.8- 32.9 (zone 0 - 29) whatever that means, Seek time (read, typical) 8.5, Acoustic-Idle (Bels) 2.8
it is faster than the Western Digital EIDE WD Caviar & WD RE but they are not listed under PATA i guess that's why they are slower.

:arrow:Seagate 3.5'' 7200 RPM IDE Drives: Specs were not listed on their site, found them at OWC's site > SEAST3250824A 250GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ATA/6 7200RPM 8MB Buffer 5yr Seagate Warr.
SEAST3300622A 300GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ATA/6 7200RPM 16MB Buffer 5yr Seagate Warr.
These had THE SAME SPECS except for BELS level How can that be??? Specs: Ultra ATA/100, Max. Ext. Transfer Rate (Mbytes/sec)100, Avg. Sustained Trans. Rate (Mbytes/sec) n/a, Avg Seek (msec) 11, Avg Latency (msec) 4.16, Seek 8.161, Idle 6.946, Standby 0.329, Acoustics,Idle (Bels-typ sound power) 2.8 For 300 GB), 2.5 (for 250 GB)

[baanes]

I'm pretty sure that the 16mb vs 8mb cache does not give a huge increase in performance, particularly for this sort of situation. If you think about it, for multitracking what the drive does is constantly read or write a lot of data. I think you will be happy with the Hitachi drive you mentioned; I do remember reading that the newest seagate ata drives lag behind the competition. But really, the speed difference is slight enough that we are probably talking about one or two more/less tracks in practice.
Ideally you should hook it up as master on the secondary ATA channel (not the one that the boot drive is on). Then put the DVD as slave on the primary channel with the boot drive so that your audio drive has the entire channel to itself. See if apple has any info on this, my experience with setting up drives is mostly with PCs. A PCI card is certainly a safe way to go; the ATA bus is 133 mb/s not mhz, which is much faster than the sustained transfer rate for most drives, while the PCI bus runs at 33mhz but transfers about as fast as the ATA bus. This shouldn't be a problem unless you have a lot of other pci cards. And yes, firewire will be slower. It runs at 50mb/s (400 megabits=50 megabytes). If you do decide to get a PCI card I would reccomend getting one that is SATA and a SATA drive simply to future-proof things, as the drive will be useable in your next system as well. I hope this helps instead of complicating things.

[bh]

It's definitely food for thought. That's for sure. As I was adding to my post, you sent me your reply. I was actually going to get the 1st drive I listed but after hearing your post, I have to weigh my costs. so you've helped me a lot as well as hindered my progress. Of course doing the best thing is the most important issue here. Extremely interesting ideas to move the DVD drive to the other bus. I've never heard anybody do this on a Mac and I've been working on them for about 6 years now.
Can anybody tell me if they've done any bus swapping like this on a Mac? I'm extremely interested.

After some more thought and research I decided to go with 2 - Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 HDT722525DLAT80 drives.

I really appreciate everyone's assistance and will check back over the next couple of days to see if this thread has anything new and interesting in it. I'm still very interested in the bus swapping and if i can get a hold of some cables for free, I'll probably give that a shot after i aquire some data on the box.

[DonaldDriver]

That sound on sound article was from 2003, its too outdated to even think about now.

Best place I have seen for HD information is www.storagereview.com

[Don T]

Hello:
I have 250 GB drives (2) in my old 450mhz G4 that has been upgraded to dual 1.3ghz cpu. There is an application called "max drive" or something like it (from the tech tools folks) that allows using larger drives. Speed tools reported internal ATA at 48 MB/sec read/write (hitachi 7200 w/8MB cache). The external FW 400 (OWC 250GB) was at 39MB R/W. The same external drive on the G5 FW800 showed 59/55 MB/sec R/W. Same speed as the internal SATA.

I prefer the Hitachi drives cuz' they are sooooo quiet. Half the noise of the WD which I took out and put in a PC.

[emulatorloo]

That sound on sound article was from 2003, its too outdated to even think about now.

Best place I have seen for HD information is www.storagereview.com

May not be so outdated if, like the OP, you are using a Quicksilver Mac from 2001 or 2002! In that case, the priniciples and tests in that article still apply.

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p.s. thanks for that great link.

[bh]

Everything is working smoothly for me over here. My last question is about the boot drive that came with the node. it only has a 2mb cache. Would it be a substantial gain in tracks or performance to upgrade that to a quicker drive similar to what I've got for the data drive?

[EddieRivas]

I removed a lot of items that don't need to be there for recording.

Like what? I know I have a ton of stuff in mine that I don't need but are there specific files etc..t hat I can get rid of also, i knew my way around OS 9 pretty well but I don't know OSX too well in terms of configuring things.

Any advice?
Thanks,
Eddie