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Wiebetech Breaks Through The Capacity And Power Barriers for FireWire Drives.

Originally posted 10/21/02 by rob-ART morgan,
Bare Feats webmaster and mad scientist (
rob-art@barefeats.com)
10/25/02 Comment added on Granite
SMART FireVue with ATA-6 support

 

TWO NEW CHALLENGES FACE FIREWIRE DRIVE MAKERS:

CHALLENGE #1: To develop a FireWire case kit that can handle the new 180GB and 200GB drives. Up until the day this article was posted, there were no FireWire cases shipping that would support the new ATA-6 standard needed to support these drives. A few companies hacked the ATA-5 firmware to work with the Maxtor D540X 160GB 5400 rpm drive, but to support ATA-6 required Oxford to change their firmware and for the makers of FireWire case kits to change the bridgeboard circuits.

CHALLENGE #2: To develop a FireWire case kit that will enable 180+GB 7200 rpm 3.5 inch drives to run off of bus power on Macs with BUILT-IN FireWire ports. Up until recently, only a 2.5 inch drive could run off of bus power.

I can announce today that WiebeTech is the first company overcome those two challenges... simultaneously! (Read their white paper on ATA-6 support for 137GB+ drives.)

10/25/02 -- Correction: I received confirmation from Granite Digital (and a reader) that the SMART FireVue case kit supports ATA-6 (137+ GB) drives. Furthermore, their SMART case will tell you if your drive is about to fail. So WiebeTech's Super DriveDock and Super DesktopGB are not the only FireWire solutions to support ATA-6 drives. However, the WiebeTech case kits do run off of bus power, while the Granite case requires A/C power.

Wiebetech is NOW shipping three ATA-6 FireWire solutions: Super DesktopGB, Super DriveDock, and regular FireWire DriveDock. All three support the new, fast, high capacity 180+ GB ATA-133 drives such as the IBM Deskstar 180GXP, the Western Digital WD1800BB/JB or WD2000BB/JB, and the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9.

And the Super DriveDock and Super DesktopGB support those "monster" drives with nothing but FireWire bus power. Batteries not included or needed. No cords. No transformer bricks. Nada.

 

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL WITH BUS POWER?

Many Titanium G4 PowerBook owners have written me that they like the bus powered 2.5 inch drives but they aren't fast enough (about 20MB/s) and/or don't store enough (60GB max). They can use the 3.5 inch drive solutions but they are often bulky and require A/C power. Even owners of iMacs and G4 Towers wish they could have freedom from power cords and no 137GB limits on storage. In the graphs below, I seek to show how the new bus powered Wiebetech Super FireWire kits with 180GB drives can significantly increase your speed and capacity.

 

REAL WORLD TESTS

Duplicating the 457MB "pak0.pk3" file from Quake3 is my favorite test since it forces the drive to read and write to itself at the same time.

 

 

By setting Photoshop's memory size to 41MB and having it rotate a 45MB document, I force it to read from and write to the scratch disk... which is defined as the drive being tested. 

 

 

BENCHMARKS - INTECH's QUICKBENCH X

 

 

 

PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

The WiebeTech bus powered 180+ GB FireWire bus powered solutions provide a new level of performance, capacity, and convenience to PowerBook and iBook users as well as Power Mac and iMac users who want the freedom from power cords and capacity restrictions.

These bus powered 3.5 inch FireWire setups blow away the best 2.5 inch portable solutions like the Travelstar 60GH and 40GNX, as you can see in the graphs above. Plus, the 180+ GB drives are actually less expensive than the 60GH.

 

SURPRISES & CAVEATS

10/25/02 -- Correction: I received confirmation from Granite Digital (and a reader) that the SMART FireVue case kit supports ATA-6 (137+ GB) drives. Furthermore, their SMART case will tell you if your drive is about to fail. So WiebeTech's Super DriveDock and Super DesktopGB are not the only FireWire solutions to support ATA-6 drives, as I stated at the top of this page. However, the WiebeTech case kits do run off of bus power, while the Granite case requires A/C power.

If you bought a WiebeTech Super DriveDock or Super DesktopGB without ATA-6 support, you can upgrade for as little as $69. (If you bought within the last 15 days, you might do even better).

There are a few drives that can't can't run on FireWire bus power. Contact WiebeTech for a list of exceptions.

The Maxtor D540X-4G 160GB 5400rpm drive performed surprisingly well compared to the 7200rpm drives. It actually beat them on the sustained benchmark.

Even these cutting edge 180+ GB drives seem to hit the wall at 35MB/sec when connected to any of the FireWire bridgeboards. If that's not enough speed and you have a G3/G4 Power Mac "tower," you might want to consider buying an ATA-133 PCI host controller card and mounting the new 180+ GB drives internally. To illustrate the point, I've provided a few more graphs below.

  

WHERE TO BUY

The WiebeTech Super DesktopGB, Super DriveDock, and "normal" FireWire DriveDock can be ordered directly from Weibetech with or without a drive. (If you order the Super DesktopGB with a drive, I suggest the IBM 120GXP or 180GXP for maximum overall performance.) Ask about upgrading your existing Wiebetech product.

If you want to buy a bare drive for the Wiebetech case kits or docks, you'll find low prices at Other World Computing, NewEgg, and GoogleGear. (Go to each site and do a search on "180gxp" or "wd1800bb" or "wd2000jb" or "diamondmax plus" or etc.). At GoogleGear, the IBM 180GXP 180GB 7200rpm ATA-133 drive is in stock and going for $299 plus $1 for 2-day FedEx shipping.

WiebeTech also sells a fast FireWire PCI card.

My favorite FireWire cables are the thin white ones from the Apple Online Store. (See cables section.)

 

TEST NOTES

FireWire drive testing was done on an Apple Titanium G4/800 PowerBook (1GB RAM, OS X 10.2.1). Tests were repeated on a Power Mac but results were the same.

Drives tested:
IBM Deskstar 180GXP (186GB, 7200rpm, 2MB buffer)
IBM Deskstar 120GXP (120GB, 7200rpm, 2MB buffer)
Western Digital WD1800BB (180GB, 7200rpm, 2MB buffer -- the JB model has 8MB buffer)
Maxtor D540X (160GB, 5400rpm, 2MB buffer)
IBM Travelstar 60GH (60GB, 5400rpm, 2MB buffer)
IBM Travelstar 40GNX (40GB, 5400rpm, 8MB buffer)

FireWire cases and docks tested:
WiebeTech Super Drive Dock (for 3.5 inch drives
WiebeTech Super DesktopGB
WiebeTech Notebook DriveDock (for 2.5 inch drives)

Ultra ATA-133 results were produced using the Sonnet Tempo ATA-133 PCI controller card installed in a G4/1000MP Power Mac running OS X (10.2.1).

REAL WORLD TESTS included...

1. Rotating a 45MB document in Photoshop 7 with application size set to 41MB... thereby creating a low memory condition and forcing Photoshop to read from and write to the scratch disk.

2. Duplicating a 457MB document on the test drive, forcing it to read adn write to itself, simultaneously.

BENCHMARK TEST...

QuickBench X was used to measure Random Read/Write (1M blocks). A special version of QuickBench X was used to measure Sustained Read/Write with 100MB blocks.

 

 

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