[roders]

I intend on buying a second HD (with a 7200rpm rotational speed) for a G4 I'm intending to purchase as soon as poss (goddamn ATI).
I'm thinking of buying a second drive because it's cheaper than specifiying a larger HD on the Apple store, but the question I have is if I purchase a second HDD (ATA 66) with a rotational speed of 7200rpm & set it as the master & the original drive (5400rpm) as the slave (which I'm guessing I can do) will I get the max performance out of the new "master" HD, I'm asking this as I read somewhere that the performance of the master would be limited to that of the slave drive, is this true?
Any help would be appreciated on this as well as which make & model HD to get, I've been looking at the IBM Deskstar 75GXP to play safe, but they are quite pricey, so which of the Maxtor's, Segate's, Quantums or IBM's other drives should I consider, I will be doing a bit of Digital Video & Audio editing, but I'm a student so I'm on a budget (beer money doesn't come from no where you know!)

[This message has been edited by roders (edited 09-27-2000).]

[spicyjeff]

This is true of the Bus speed...aka, ATA/33 is slower than ATA/66...rotaional speed only matters to the drive itself and how fast it can find data. The Bus determines how fast it can then get that data to the rest of the machine.

So as long as you make sure you get the new drive as ATA/66 then both your drives will run at their max speeds.

[roders]

Thanx for the "hot" tip spicyjeff
P.S sorry for the lukewarm punn

[ginoledesma]

The stock hard drives that come with the G4 in any configuration is a 7200-rpm UltraATA/66 drive (except for those with SCSI).
There seems to be some misprints in some online sites and apple manuals about the speed of the drive, which is why I inquired from Apple, Outpost.com, and a Mac reseller about the stock drives in the G4. They all confirmed its a 7200-rpm UltraATA/66 drive. The manufacturer differs though.

Most people prefer getting UltraATA/33 7200-rpm drives than UltraATA/66 5400-rpm drives, too.

But get a UltraATA/66 7200-rpm drive if possible.

[CyberDave]

Originally posted by ginoledesma:
The stock hard drives that come with the G4 in any configuration is a 7200-rpm UltraATA/66 drive (except for those with SCSI).
There seems to be some misprints in some online sites and apple manuals about the speed of the drive, which is why I inquired from Apple, Outpost.com, and a Mac reseller about the stock drives in the G4. They all confirmed its a 7200-rpm UltraATA/66 drive. The manufacturer differs though.

According to Apple's online store (click on "Learn More" next to the hard drive options when configuring a G4), the 20 GB is 5400 RPM, the 30 and 40 GB are 7200 RPM. The 20 GB *USED* to be 7200 RPM, but that was when it was the midrange option. Now it is the low end option. Anyone have a gigabit-Ethernet G4 who can check this? (Mine will be here in about a week or so)

[ginoledesma]

Really? I didn't know that. I guess Apple dropped the 7200-rpm drives for cheaper 5400-rpms drives to justify the cost of the other upgrades.

But that's not so good. Considering "professionals" or high-end people get Power Macs, they surely should be given the best.

This is a long shot, but if you order from the online sites like Outpost.com or Mac Warehouse, you *could* ask them to swap hard disks for no extra cost. That's how I got an extra 64MB of RAM -- considering there was no promo or anything!

Originally posted by spicyjeff:
This is true of the Bus speed...aka, ATA/33 is slower than ATA/66...rotaional speed only matters to the drive itself and how fast it can find data. The Bus determines how fast it can then get that data to the rest of the machine.

With apologies to spiceyjeff, I'd like to point out that this is incorrect. There is very little difference between ATA/33 and ATA/66 (or ATA/100 for that matter).

Rotational speed is MUCH more important that bus speed. There is no way that a single drive could even approach 33 MB/S. The fastest that I have every personally measured (on a Maxstor 7200 RPM drive) was just under 10 MB/s.

With a maximum of two devices on an IDE chain, 33 MB/S is entirely sufficient.

Note that the fact that ATA/66 or 100 drives may SEEM faster is entirely due to drive advances, larger memory caches on the drives, better algorythms and faster rotational speeds that most newer drives have. But it's not the bus speed.



[This message has been edited by macsimum (edited 09-30-2000).]

[MacOS761]

I entirely agree and you are right, so I am curious whether you have an opinion as to why computer companies are putting faster ATA busses in our computers? Can you have a SCSI hardware RAID connect to the ATA bus? That could max out more than 33MB/s. But what is the point?

------------------
We're supposed to sing about piraty things!

[roders]

Is the 20GB HD in the Base Cube & Tower a 7200RPM drive or not, despite what the specs on Apple's site say.
Any info from users of these machines (Gigabyte ethernet machines only) will be much appreciated.

[flyhigh37]

So I too am interested in installing a faster 7200 (or even 10,000!!!) RPM hard drive as the master, replacing the 5400 factory installed. I am concerned however on how to do this, since i have been told that documentation with the new hard drives is notoriously bad. Are than any tips or places where I could gain information on how exactly to replace a new harddrive in as the master, making the old one a slave?

[spicyjeff]

People,

Yes a 7200RPM drive is going to be faster of course. That is why both of mine are 7200RPM models. And I said that.

But, if you have an ultra fast 7200RPM ATA/66 drive on the same IDE bus with another 7200RPM (or slower) drive that is ATA/33 you are not going to get peak performance. The IDE bus only wokrs at the lowest common denominator of speed, the same as a SCSI bus. You could have an ULTRA/160 card in you machine but if you hook up a SCSI-1 device to your chain you aren't going to go over the rated speed of SCSI-1 which is 5 mb/s.

So unless you want your drives to pump out data at a slower rate, remember the IDE bus works in the lowest common denominator fashion.

And with all respect to "Macsimum," I am not wrong. A 7200RPM ATA/66 drive is fsater since it can get more data to the bus faster and sooner BUT if that IDE bus is being slowed down by another ATA/33 drive you aren't getting peak performance.

So definitely get the fastest you can for the modern Macs which is 7200RPM ATA/66 (unless you go SCSI) but don't squander you money by making the drive run slower than it can by hooking it up with an ATA/33 or slower drive.

Originally posted by MacOS761:
I entirely agree and you are right, so I am curious whether you have an opinion as to why computer companies are putting faster ATA busses in our computers?

The following is my humble opinion:

The point is that doubling the burst transfer rate will result in lower latency for small files or file segments on operating systems that hang while the IDE controller is carrying out a read.

Think about the multitude of tiny DLLs and frequently used sections of the registry under Windows.

Modern OS's (Linux, Win 98 w/ bus mastering, probably OS X) don't hang while waiiting for the disk, this is less of an issue.

Anytime the head has to move from track to track, the gains of a faster IDE bus are pretty much wiped out.

Another consideration is that faster bus
speeds allow the hard drive manufacturers
to get away with smaller RAM buffers on
the drives, resulting in lower manufacturing
costs.

Now for the conspiracy theory. It is in the computer industries best interest to promote shorter upgrade cycles. So hard disk and motherboard companies will hype the new improved numbers as much as possible.

Spiceyjeff is correct when he says that mixing 33, 66, and 100 will result in the bus operating at the slowest speed. I just don't think it makes much of a difference - I wouldn't throw away an old 6 Gig UDMA/33 drive just to wring the last 2% of performance out of new UDMA/66 drive.

Also, I agree with him when he says to get a UDMA/66 or 100 drive if you are buying a new one. Not because of the a faster bus speed, but becuase it will be a newer product line with better technology all around.


[This message has been edited by macsimum (edited 09-30-2000).]