Finally: Mac-compatible SATA-to-FW integrated enclosure

[Moogs]

Been looking for this type of product (without need of bridge chips, extra PCI cards, etc.) for months... this is one of a kind right now AFAICT. Weibetech seems to put out some solid stuff each year....

http://www.wiebetech.com/products/traydock.php

[Luca]

Looks very nice, but it's extremely expensive! Considering that PATA drives are every bit as fast, inexpensive, and readily available as SATA, I don't see the point. Though I'm sure there are a few people who would need something like this and be willing to pay $170 for it.

A SATA PCI card is $60-$80 though. Big difference, since an internally mounted SATA takes up less room and you can put two drives on the card.

[Moogs]

Well, there's no point unless you have a spare SATA drive that you want to put to good use as an external scratch disk / storage unit. Also, when you're talking about a native interface like the ones in the G5, and a native SATA drive... I think the performance (at least according to storage review articles I've seen) is definitely better overall, though not drastically so.

The problem with the PCI cards is that all the Mac compatible ones I've found are internal ports only, which makes the option of using a less expensive but faster external SATA-out enclosure, moot. I wouldn't mind using a case that had a SATA port on the back, but there are no PCI cards I can find that both have an exteral port, and are OS X compatible.

So while I won't got out and buy one tomorrow, sometime in the coming year it's very likely I will buy a couple of these and replace my existing internal drives with the next generation Raptor or Seagate, or maybe the existing 74GB Raptor, which uses liquid bearings (and thus makes less racket than the 36GB model).

[Luca]

The performance increase by moving from a fully PATA system to a fully native SATA system is minor at best. I mean, PATA transfers at 133 MB/s, while SATA does 150 MB/s. Not much of a difference.

You'll see more benefits with drives that use new technology and are only available in SATA. Things like native command queuing (not sure what it does but I heard it increases performance 5-10%) and simply adding more cache (there's a new Maxtor in SATA only that has 16 MB and also increases performance slightly).

The other thing about SATA is that you don't have to mess with jumper settings and the cables are simply much smaller and more flexible. Those features are just as important as the minor performance increase.

BTW, you can always route an internal cable out of another PCI slot. Not the prettiest solution, but there are some PCI slot covers that have holes cut in them specifically for that purpose.

[709]

The other thing about SATA is that you don't have to mess with jumper settings and the cables are simply much smaller and more flexible. Those features are just as important as the minor performance increase.Exactly. I'm in the market for another video storage device and have seriously been considering building a homegrown JBOD of sorts out of SATA drives. I've even read about someone getting GB/s throughput with 36 drives. :eek:

The TransIntl Swiftdata 200 (http://transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2490) looks pretty sweet, but requires (for now) 2 SATA PCI cards...and I'm plum out of slots. When a newer SATA card with more than 2 channels comes out I'll be sorely tempted to yank my extra FW800 card.

[MCQ]

The performance increase by moving from a fully PATA system to a fully native SATA system is minor at best. I mean, PATA transfers at 133 MB/s, while SATA does 150 MB/s. Not much of a difference.


That's also theoretical performance... which neither of them come close to. In real world though, the performance delta is much smaller. I remember at first that SATA may not even have been as quick... I assume that it's at least evened up by now, or maybe a small edge for SATA.

[Moogs]

The burst rates for the better SATA drives are generally 10-20MB/s faster than the better 7200 PATA drives, sustained is less pronounced a margin but when opening large images and such (coupled with the better cache as Luca said), I think it makes a real-world difference, for lack of a better phrase.

[MCQ]

Hadn't looked at the burst speeds... then I'd take an SATA (preferably in Raptor form :))

Luca: You mentioned that Maxtor made a drive with 16MB cache in only SATA form? Or did I read it incorrectly? I see a Maxtor PATA HD with 16MB cache here:
http://www.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do?level=SK&id=774952

[Luca]

Oh, nevermind. I thought it was SATA only because I heard about that Maxtor having both 16 MB of cache and also NCQ, the combination of which was supposed to make it nearly as fast as the WD Raptor. But I guess they still offer it in PATA form.

Unfortunately I can't comment on real-world performance differences between SATA and PATA. I have a SATA drive now, but it's in a Windows computer. Although I did have a PATA drive in my PC earlier, I upgraded multiple components when I got my SATA drive so there's no way for me to test.

[badtz]

is that the only SATA-->>Firewire enclosure? [that's extremely expensive btw] :(

I'm hoping to buy a SATA HD (in firewire enclosure) so I'm able to put it in my *future* PM G5 .....

:err:

[Moogs]

It's the only one I've found with a native interface (no extra bridge boards required) and firewire. There was another one from a company in Australia I think, but the name escapes me. So yah, the market choices for this niche are slim and next-to-none right now.