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l008com · Jul 30, 2003, 12:36 AM

OK So I was thinking about getting two cheapey 40 GB drives, and combining them with my G4's stock 40 GB drive, and building myself one fast IDE RAID. But the more I think about it, and the more I see 7200 drives with 8 MB of cache, the more I'm thinking that maybe I ought to get two new drives, and leave out the old 40. Instead of two cheapeys, i'd get two higher performers. I don't need more than 80 GB total, I probably don't even need that much. But I want new reliable drives, and I want great performance. Now I don't want a cheapey, but I still would like some affordability. Money is an object or else I'd be buying SCSI. In a related questions, how come there's no such thing as a 10000RPM IDE drive? Anyway, are there any affordable not too expensive 40 GB drives out there. I'd like that big cache since I hear it helps alot.

Opinions?. .

CIA · Jul 30, 2003, 09:32 AM

10,000RPM IDE drive: http://www.maximumpc.com/features/fe...003-03-17.html

l008com · Jul 31, 2003, 06:18 PM

What is the performance difference between a 40 GB 7200 RPM ATA100 drive with 2 MB cache, and the same drive with an 8 MB cache? How significant is that extra cache?

OreoCookie · Aug 1, 2003, 01:51 AM

Originally posted by l008com:
What is the performance difference between a 40 GB 7200 RPM ATA100 drive with 2 MB cache, and the same drive with an 8 MB cache? How significant is that extra cache?

Not a lot. 40 gigs is too small nowadays, the price/performance sweetspot is somewhere between 120 and 160/180 gigs.

Plus they are usually faster than a RAID0 (striping, adding the capacity of both drives).

BTW, there are 10,000 rpm IDE (SerialATA) drives out, but they are very pricey and have a comparatively low capacity (36 gigs).

l008com · Aug 1, 2003, 02:55 AM

How can one drive be faster than a raid of drives? The reason I wanted to use 40 Gb drive is because that would give me a total of either 80 or 120 GB, which is MORE than enough, I have a file server i keep my big stuff on. Im doing it for speed not space. And you would think 40 GB drives would be much cheaper than 160 Gb ones.

Sam Venning · 11:40 PM

I thought I had a problem with the IceCube800 cases I purchased recently. The source of problem turned out to be a faulty Hitachi hard drive which was replaced on warranty.

I decided to get two Hitachi 180GB 8MB Deskstar GXP drives for work and one for my own personal use. I got the Hitachi 180GB Deskstar GXP because it was the one recommended by www.barefeats.com (excellent site!). The benchmark tests look very good for this drive (see link below). The benchmak tests also look good when put in a nice new IceCube800 Firewire 800 enclosure (see link below).

I used the drives on several PowerMac G4 computers using both the Firewire400 and Firewire800 connections. Two of the drives experienced corrupt directories - serious corruptions that Diskwarrior 3 couldn't repair. I retrieved some of the data but when I try to retrieve one folder the drive light blinks on and off (slowly) and my Mac (Mac OS 10.2.6) becomes unresponsive.

I reformatted the hard disk drives (zero all data) in a fresh attempt to start with a "clean" drive... but the problems returned. One of the drives was replaced on warranty... I will use the drives with caution for the first month.

http://www.barefeats.com/#quick - Rob recommends Hitachi drive.
http://www.barefeats.com/fire37.html - Rob's review of the Firewire 800 enclosures.
http://www.barefeats.com/hard26.html - Rob's review of the Hitachi drive.
http://fwdepot.com/thestore/product...products_id/385 - IceCube800 enclosure details.

l008com · Aug 2, 2003, 10:07 PM

Maybe Firewire 800 has bugs!?!?!?!