[Todd Madson]

All:

Well, due to the generosity of my wife I ended up with a surprise birthday gift of a Corei7 iMac recently and my previous machine is a G5 2.5 ghz machine with 8 gigs of ram.

I've got two possible methods to interface my iMac to the G5 to access my big 1.5 TB drives in the G5 that I can think of:

-Firewire 800 and Target Disc mode. I do have a Firewire 800 cable connected between the machines.
Speed limit 800 MB/s (theoretical).

-Gigabit ethernet and standard networking for potentially even faster connectivity.
Speed limit 1000 MB/s (theoretical).

Since there are no eSata ports or USB3 those are ruled out but I wonder if someone produces a FW800 to eSata connection
or the like?

Eventually the G5 will be retired since the power supply is starting to show signs of brittleness after a recent transformer
explosion in our neighborhood. I want to move towards a powered case with either FW800 or some other connectivity
method.

For the time being I'll stick with connecting via gigabit or FW800 but is there another method I haven't thought of?

Your thoughts?

[P]

FW800 is your best bet. That way, you can have a dedicated line to transfer stuff between your G5 and iMac. While Gigabit ethernet is theoretically higher bandwidth, you need either an awesome switch to take advantage of it (NOT home networking quality), or use a direct connection and lose the only network connection of the iMac. FW800 is quite fast, and there's also latency to consider.

Transfer speed is two things: latency and bandwidth. Bandwidth is the number of bits you can transfer per second, while latency is the time it takes to transfer the first bit. An eSATA to FW800 won't help either of those. eSATA's big advantage is in the latency, and the first rule of latency is that you can never remove latency from a system by an extra step. An FW800 to eSATA converter will always be slower than a straight FW800 connection.

Eventually, I would advice you to conisder an empty NAS cabinet for those drives, however. Unless they're going to be in use continiously, you can move the working set to the iMac as required and have the NAS box in a closet somewhere, so access speed will be less relevant. NASes are very useful things.

[mduell]

Gigabit ethernet leaves the computer usable for other use (if even just other services), whereas TDM turns your huge computer into a dumb block device.

[Thorzdad]

Ethernet FTW. That's what I do with my iMac and old G5.

[SierraDragon]

Once one senses that a key component of an old box seems "brittle" IMO it is time to bail. Buy external FW800 cases and be done with it. Or sell the G5 specifying "as-is" and buy new FW800 externals.

-Allen

[P]

Originally Posted by mduell 

Gigabit ethernet leaves the computer usable for other use (if even just other services), whereas TDM turns your huge computer into a dumb block device.

I didn't mean target disk mode, I meant IP over Firewire. Sorry, I didn't read the OP closely enough. IP over Firewire is great, I use it all the time due to some odd details in how the network at home works.

Originally Posted by SierraDragon

Once one senses that a key component of an old box seems "brittle" IMO it is time to bail. Buy external FW800 cases and be done with it. Or sell the G5 specifying "as-is" and buy new FW800 externals.

This has some truth in it as well, although IME the later G5s have good quality PSUs.

[Todd Madson]

Trying to find a good box that will hold multiple SATA drives and is firewire 800 compatible.

(Anyone got some good sources? Newegg?).

[mduell]

The 2 drive FW800 enclosures (and USB for that matter) tend to be wonky. Just a little too cheap and unreliable.

FW depot used to be a good place for stuff like this, but they seem to have vanished.

Drobo is a decent option for 4-5 drives.

[AKcrab]

Originally Posted by mduell 

The 2 drive FW800 enclosures (and USB for that matter) tend to be wonky. Just a little too cheap and unreliable.

Seconded.

[Dex13]

second on the drobo idea

[Todd Madson]

I looked around a bit and did some testing while I was looking around.

I found that transferring data from my G5 over Firewire 800 to my iMac was slower than gigabit by a good measure.
-transferring an 8.9 GB file from the G5's internal SATA drive via FW800 to the iMac took over 10 minutes.
-transferring the same file from the G5's internal SATA drive via gigabit ethernet took around 5 minutes.

Eye opening.

I did find a Firewire 800 drobo that hold 4 drives and I could take the 2 internal SATA drives out of my G5 and retire 2 external USB cases with this:
Micro Center - Data Robotics Drobo with FireWire 800 Q99012

A bit spendy: $429. But how much electricity does two USB powered cases and a PowerMac G5 consume 24/7 for a month? Probably a lot.
Over a period of four to six months? A lot more.

Anyone know if there's a Mac compatible 2-4 drive solution that can sit on a gigabit ethernet connection?

[SierraDragon]

OWC recently announced eSATA for 27" iMacs, check it out:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/turnkey/iMac_2010_27

They could add an SSD at the same time if you are feeling wealthy...

I have used OWC for many years and they have always provided righteous service and products.

-Allen

[P]

Amusing about the eSATA port - I was thinking that one might be able to do that.

They only offer it for the latest gen iMac, however. It seems that they do not actually add any SATA ports - they only route the existing port to an external port or to an SSD. For this reason, SSD installation and eSATA port are actually mutually exclusive. It would be possible to add a SATA port multiplier to actually increase the number of ports, but at least one OWC comment (number 11) implies that they don't think that that is possible. I wonder why - the chipset does support port multipliers.

[Todd Madson]

Yeah, I love it. 28 days after I buy my new machine I get the opportunity to see a even newer machine that can have an extra eSata port.

Grumble. My timing sucks for all of this. Or rather if the transformer blew up a week or two later. No matter.

And I realized the Drobo solution isn't going to be for me: all of those drives are formatted, in use and I'm not inclined to back them up to something
else to let Drobo do its thing because they *are* the back-up drives.

Drobo means you format it with their proprietary software and they work as one. I've read a lot of reviews of fried units or fried drives and I think the solution I have is a bit awkward but it works as is and it's pretty fast.

When the G5 dies I'll improvise - more time will have passed and I'll have better options down the line.

[Mac Write]

You can switch to the Drobo, just do it in stages (a drive at a time) so you can move your data. What sizes are your SATA Drives, how full are they, and how much space is free on your iMac? ALso you can get a Drobo Firewire for $349.