[jabaro]

I would like to add a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 ATA133 160 GB hard drive and I have two questions:

• For performance, do I add it to the rear position ATA100 along with the stock drive or alone in the front position ATA66? How bad is the speed hit having two drives on the same controller?

• For size, does the front ATA66 position even support drives over 128 GB? (if no, this would negate the first question)

[Lateralus]

1) I would take the drive that is currently on the ATA-100 bus and move it to the ATA-66 bus.

If you use both on the same bus, you will see the performance hit when you are transfering files between both drives or when they are both active.

2) No, the ATA-66 bus will only support drive up to 137GBs.

[jabaro]

Originally posted by PowerMacMan:
1) I would take the drive that is currently on the ATA-100 bus and move it to the ATA-66 bus.

That's the startup drive. Are you saying move the startup drive to the ATA66?

[Lateralus]

Yes.

What I would do is move the stock/boot drive to the ATA-66 bus, put the new 160GB drive on the ATA-100 bus. Then install Carbon Copy Cloner and use it to duplicate the contents of the current drive to the 160GB. Then just wipe the stock drive and use it as the backup.

[jabaro]

Originally posted by PowerMacMan:
What I would do is move the stock/boot drive to the ATA-66 bus, put the new 160GB drive on the ATA-100 bus. Then install Carbon Copy Cloner and use it to duplicate the contents of the current drive to the 160GB. Then just wipe the stock drive and use it as the backup.

The main purpose of the new 160 GB drive is additional storage for video capture and editing. Does that affect your suggestion?

[The Placid Casual]

Originally posted by PowerMacMan:
Yes.

What I would do is move the stock/boot drive to the ATA-66 bus, put the new 160GB drive on the ATA-100 bus. Then install Carbon Copy Cloner and use it to duplicate the contents of the current drive to the 160GB. Then just wipe the stock drive and use it as the backup.

Good advice, I would also do it this way...

[Lateralus]

Originally posted by jabaro:
The main purpose of the new 160 GB drive is additional storage for video capture and editing. Does that affect your suggestion?

Frankly, you'll need to decide exactly how much room you need for video. If the stock drive is large enough that it could hold all of your video, then I would definately do what I suggested above

The thing is that your newer drive, the 160GB/8MB, would get choked if you stuck it on the ATA-66 bus.

If you honesly need a lot of dedicated space specifically for video, I would do this:

1) Go ahead and move your stock drive to the ATA/66 bus and put the new 160GB drive on the ATA/100 bus.

2) Format the new 160GB drive with two partitions. The drive, after format, will be approximately 149GBs. I would personally make one of the partitions 69GBs and the other 80GBs (That way your large partition would be the same size as your stock drive. It frankly doesn't matter whether or not it is the same size, I am just a perfectionist. ).

3) Use Carbon Copy Cloner to migrate your OS X install to the 49GB partition on the 160GB drive.

4) After Carbon Copy Clone has finished and you have booted on the other drive, wipe the stock drive abd use the second 80GB partition you created and the stock drive for video storage.

If you do that, you get the advantage of being able to have your OS X install on your newer and faster 160, as well as a good amount of your video while still being able to keep the video seperate. And once the 80GB partition is filled up, start filling up the stock drive.

The second advantage to this would be that if one of your drives died, you would not lose all of your video. You would lose either your OS X install & 1/2 your video, or just 1/2 your video.

[jabaro]

PowerMacMan,

I don't mean to be thick (or argumentative), but I really don't understand your rationale.

Even though the new hard drive is an ATA 133, it's still an ATA 100 bus, so it would be no faster than the stock 120 GB drive (assuming the stock drive is an ATA 100 or greater - how can you tell?). A drive can only be as fast as the bus. Right? However, if other factors are involved, such as a larger cache, then it would make sense to put the system on the newer drive.

Aside from the question of where the system goes, wouldn't having 2 partitions on the drive on the ATA 100 bus be no better than having two drives on that bus? You can only read/write from one partition at a time, just as you can only read/write from one drive on a bus at the same time. So if my understanding, and logic, is correct, then having one drive with two partitions would be equivalent to having two drives on one bus. Correct? Or, wouldn't two drives with two independent caches be better than two partitions sharing one cache?

[tooki]

Originally posted by PowerMacMan:

2) No, the ATA-66 bus will only support drive up to 137GBs.

Absolutely untrue. The MDD G4's IDE controllers ALL support 48-bit LBA, allowing for large drive support.

tooki

[Man Packs Eagle]

Jubaro, I added a second HD to my 1.25 for video editing and I put it on the ATA 100 side by side with the boot disk. If there is a performance hit I certainly haven't noticed it.

Don't get hung up on this speed thing, both buses are plenty fast for capturing video. What's far more important is to have an uninterrupted transfer of the DV stream, which means writing to a physically separate drive.

If you capture onto a partiton of your boot disk as PowerMacMan recommends then you can't do anything else while you're capturing, like use another program. The head can't read and write in different places at once. Add a dedicated drive and you can write to one while you access software and files on the other.

So my advice is don't bother with cloning your system and swapping drives over, just bolt your Maxtor onto the 100 bus and get going.

Save the ATA 66's for your second and third scratch disks. I'm gonna fill up both of mine before I'm done. javascript:smilie('')

[Kenneth]

On my MDD

ATA/100:
WD 120GB (8mb buffer)

ATA/66:
WD 120GB (8mb buffer)
Seagate 80GB (stock/2mb buffer)

I planned to get a 250GB drive at Fry's and get rid of one of the 120GB drive. However, I just ordered a SuperDrive.