fw800 G-raid vs. eSATA

hey guys, anyone have any links or experience in comapring the performance of a fw800 G-raid to that of a pci eSATA array?

Wayne,

I would like to communicate to you without a fight over Firewire vs SATA RAID.

The following is my personal experience with SATA RAIDS and not with FW RAID.

We know this much - FW 800 Mbps is advertised 100 MBps. Adding more than one 1394 device to a chain will, in most cases slow this down. IN reality, I have never seen FW800 as a single drive transfer any faster than 60 MB/per second.

My personal experience with a SATA RAID 0 on my G4 Quicksilver 2002 MAC with 4 stripes (drives) is about 65 MB/sec write and >75 MB/sec per SATA channel. I could have the write and read speeds mixed up, but my point is that a 2 stripe SATA RAID will get around 150 MB/sec and a 4 stripe SATA RAID will get around 275MB/sec. This is off the 33 MHz PCI slots in a G4.

At MacWorld last year, using a G5 with PCI-X slot and 8 drives, several vendors were getting more than 500 MB/sec. So it is understood that SATA channels can get at least 60 MB/per second and do it additively.

SATA RAID's slow down to about one-half speed when the drives get near
2/3rds full.

I am waiting for a PCI Express SATA comtroller card for my G5 Quad to host 4 - 500 GB drives to see what the PCI Express connections can support.

hey john, thanks for the info. seems like a pretty open and shut case to me!

the only time i'll fight about FW is when folks try to tell a newbie that firewire doesnt work in general.

i was looking at promax's satamax line, but i hear that the burlybox line from macgurus is a better deal and that you have a better choice of pci cards from macgurus...

anyone have thoughts on the issue?

see john, sometimes i DONT bite - ha!

WG

Wayne,

If you want a really good external SATA box, also take a look at the 4 drive from www.firmtek.com. Bearfeats.com has a really good review of it as well.

Personally, I am waiting for a PCIexpress SATA controller card for my Quad G5, as I have 4 - 500 GB drives waiting to go inside.

John

cool - i'll have a look...

Hi John:

There already is at least one PCIe Sata RAID card available from Max Upgrades, the MaxConnect SATA 8 channel card. [www.maxupgrades.com]

Dan

Thanks Dan,
I am using the MaxConnect aluminum mounting solution for the CPU bay and waiting for a solution to power those 4 drives. The currently available card is a HiPoint SATA card buy I want to see what Sonnet and FirmTek annonce this week at MacWorld. I would really like to see a hardware RAID 3 - 5 solution available from a MacCentric company.