Disk Speed Upgrades (aka The Bootable PCI SATA & SSD thread)

[DieHard]

Of course volumes can be bigger than 190GB. But if you have any data issues or need to de-fragment the drive, then most likely you are SOL; All utilities I have tried (Disk First Aid, Norton, Disk Warrior) seem to have a real issues with any volume bigger than this; In the Audio World, smaller volumes make sense and there is definitely a speed increase on PATA volumes (obviously, you never defrag an SSD) when they are de-fragmented...

Also I like to make every volume bootable to OS 9, in case of a system crash, so just another reason to sick to the 190GB rule.

If Knez or anyone else has had a volume of 500GB with over 250GB of stuff and used the HDTS defrag, please let me know if it worked... always wanted to try that, but never had the time.  In fact, I would love a list of data recovery and maintenance tools that work on partitions that size that are at least 50% full... I never found any

[Knez]

DieHard: I use a bootable DVD of iDefrag and defragment my drives that way. Never tried Norton or any other OS9-only defragmentation application on my drives.

I could give it a try so we know what happens

[DieHard]

A utility for OS 9 that will defragment large volumes would be great, but booting to an OS X DVD and running I iDefrag sounds interesting, if I get time I will try this sometime   Thanks for the heads up.

I am very comfortable with 190GB volume sizes; I like to organize things by volume and this is plenty for me; all my volumes are OS 9 Bootable with different themes (So I know which I booted to); and I simple run maintenance on all the other volumes.  This works for me.... not sure if I ever want to boot to OS X (even to run iDefrag) on my dedicated OS 9 G4s; I did a lot of experimenting in the day and now that I have kept my 3 MDDs and 2 QS without X for the last 6 years, I have not had one hickup... so I am a creature of habit.  Maybe I will do a test machine and do the iDefrag thing for the record... a very cool option if large (non-bootable) volumes are needed.

[Knez]

DieHard, it only works on Mac capable of booting 10.5.x though, since the iDefrag DVD uses a custom version of 10.5 to boot into. If you have iDefrag, just use the link in the picture to create a bootable DVD. You can choose from a Intel only or a Universal DVD (10.5 based).

Try it out, it works great and is a great workaround. Might post the DVD image here for all the people not using OSX.
Then they can at least burn the DVD and boot into iDefrag

[DieHard]

Awesome...thanks

[supernova777]

http://www.jcsenterprises.com/Japamacs_Page/Blog/F93FC8E5-EB42-4287-BEC2-B50A6BEC8DF1.html

[supernova777]

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/IDE-to-Serial-ATA-SATA-Bilateral-HDD-Adapter-Converter-/190543541433?pt=US_Drive_Cables_dapters&hash=item2c5d47b4b9

[Ozfer]

The main issue that comes along is the PCI bus limitation. As stated the max for this system on pci is 133MB/s.

If you have one of these mac systems and you use PCI graphics, some sort of pci sound card, gigabit Ethernet, and a pci sata card with SSDs they are all fighting for the same 133MB(theoretical max) of space on the bus and will start degrading each others performance. I know there is some sort of a speed limit on the internal IDE but if you use all those other cards it may actually be faster then a pci card.

PCI-X on the other hand is able to work at about 500MB/s or 1GBP/s and should not take away from normal pci bandwidth.

It would be interested to find a PCI-X add on sata card for a mac that not only supports storage but booting. The only systems I personally have PCI-X on are high end servers from around 2000 lol and they run windows and pcix could have been used for storage . Here is a link to a example card that supports mac os 10.4 but not 9 and probably not booting. Unfortunately my powermac g3 with g4 upgrade doesn't have pci-x. If such a card could be found (it would probably have 4 sata ports) you could get a pretty crazy sata quad raid 0 1GB/s setup going on that could pretty much leave everything else in the dust.

http://www.amazon.com/Syba-SATA-PCI-X-Ports-Controller/dp/B002C0Y5X4

Also there are PCI-X to PCI-E adapters that should offer the same speeds and maybe this could be used to allow PCI-E mac or flashed graphics cards in systems that otherwise couldn't use pci-e such as the G4 maybe allowing for faster video performance?

Expensive example:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/STARTECH-PCIX1PEX4-PCI-X-TO-PCIE-ADAPTER-CARD-FOR-DESKTOP-MOTHERBOARD-MBD-/301018098415?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item461613aaef

I don't know how much of this would make a serious performance difference or if people would be willing to spend that much but it would be interesting to test.

[supernova777]

there are no g4s that have pci-x slots..
only the g5's featured pci-x bus...
my powermac g5 1.8ghz has pci-x slots.
they also output less power then pci (rated at 3.3v instead of 5v)

if you are talking about upgrading a g3 with a g4 cpu
the pci sata card with any kind of sata drive
ssd or not, will be way way way faster then
the ata/ide drive.. the ide hard drive connection in g3s is way
slower even then a normal g4.

[Ozfer]

Wow this is puzzling.

I have looked up pictures and can SEE the pci-64 port. You can see in the pic its longer then standard pci and its on a g4.


I looked it up and they are 64 bit pci ports running at 33Mhz according to Wikipedia.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Mac_G4)
 I guess they are not pci-x but still its pci 64 at 33Mhz and that allows for 266 MB/sec vs the standard PCI 133MB/sec. It should still offer a speed gain if you could utilize them instead of just pci cards as you get double the speed. Actually I didn't even realize there were so many versions till I visited this site. PCI-X and PCI-64 a pretty easy to confuse since the card slot looks the same.

Standard   Bit   Clock   Transfer rates
(bi-directional)
PCI 2.3   32 Bit   33 MHz   133 MB/sec
PCI 2.3   32 Bit   66 MHz   266 MB/sec
PCI 64   64 Bit   33 MHz   266 MB/sec
PCI 64   64 Bit   66 MHz   533 MB/sec
PCI-X 1.0   64 Bit   66 MHz   533 MB/sec
PCI-X 1.0   64 Bit   100 MHz   800 MB/sec
PCI-X 1.0   64 Bit   133 MHz   1066 MB/sec
PCI-X 2.0 (DDR)   64 Bit   133 MHz   2132 MB/sec
PCI-X 2.0 (QDR)   64 Bit   133 MHz   4264 MB/sec
PCI-Express   1 Lines 8 Bit   2.5 GHz   512 MB/sec
PCI-Express   2 Lines 8 Bit   2.5 GHz   1 GB/sec
PCI-Express   4 Lines 8 Bit   2.5 GHz   2 GB/sec
PCI-Express   8 Lines 8 Bit   2.5 GHz   4 GB/sec
PCI-Express   16 Lines 8 Bit   2.5 GHz   8 GB/sec
source: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xeon-cpus-intel-p4-extreme-platform,808-4.html

Here is a SCSI card that supports PCI 64 who knows if its mac compatible though
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009LX8EU/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=

G4 Models that support PCI-64 over just normal pci are according to wikipedia:
Power Mac G4 (AGP Graphics)
Power Mac G4 (Gigabit Ethernet)
Power Mac G4 (Digital Audio)
Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver)
Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver 2002)
Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver 2002ED)
Power Mac G4 (Mirrored Drive Doors)
Power Mac G4 (FW 800)
Power Mac G4 (Mirrored Drive Doors 2003)

And the only model that only supports 32bit pci is
Power Mac G4 (PCI Graphics)

Also for the best video performance you would want one with AGP 4X that allows faster throughput such as
Power Mac G4 (Digital Audio)
Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver)
Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver 2002)
Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver 2002ED)
Power Mac G4 (Mirrored Drive Doors)
Power Mac G4 (FW 800)
Power Mac G4 (Mirrored Drive Doors 2003)

Also I was talking about G4s or G3s either way if you use a high end PCI card for graphics, audio, and gigabit Ethernet there is a real chance that it could impact the performance of a HDD through PCI. I have no idea how much it would be compared to the original board but it could be tested. It would make more of a impact on raid 0 systems or ssd systems. Mactron even said this earlier "  This allow a Max bandwidth of 133 MB/s. This fact and sharing the PCI bus with other cards (like in/out audio and DSP cards) let this SATA cards low room for improvements."

OMJ I didn't even see what mactron posted lol he seems to always beat me to these things... new challenge, find a 64 bit pci sata card compatible with os 9

Here is one that will work in a G4 and is pci 64 bit but only works in os 10.3 and up made by sonnet
http://www.ebay.com/itm/SONNET-TECH-Tempo-SATA-X4P-Host-Adapter-TSATAII-X4P-Windows-Mac-PCI-X-/171230196577?pt=US_Computer_Disk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item27de1d7361

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_sata_x4p.html
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_sata_x4i.html

WOOT I DID IT

This card has 4 sata ports supports native mac booting and mac os and supports os 9 and SHOULD work with 5v or 3v pci 64 bit.
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1v4/

Imagine mac os 9 with 4 SSD in raid 0 with 266MB/sec instead of 133 that's double the HDD speed right there.

[supernova777]

mac os 9 doesnt support raid on its own
it would have to be software-powered raid.. which would suck;)
or a hardware card that does the raid (oblivious to the os)

the card i have (noted above) is the acard AEC-6890m and it is the only pci sata hardware raid card that i could find,
i got the last one in stock from acard themselves, this card is deleted, rare, + sold out now
the os will see the two drives on this card if its configured to raid modes as one drive

from the box u can see there is also a bigger version that supports 4 drives... the AEC-6896m
but i cant even find a picture of it on the net.. its 10 year old technology that wasnt ever really mass produced i think
and could be very hard to find

re: the other stuff u brought up, check out the next page:
http://superuser.com/questions/526118/bandwidth-of-pcisata-card-vs-built-in-sata


so, from the info re: slot pattern config above, u can see that it is indeed a 5v 64bit PCI slot pictured on what looks like a quicksilver motherboard

regardless of any limitations, im pretty sure the Sata Pci card will smoke any of the built in ATA's..
that would be interesting to see.. a side by side boot up + benchmark test
from the same SSD drive..

first, connected via one of the PCI-Sata cards i detailed above..
2nd, connected via the card you linked (the 64bit Seritek 1v4)
3rd, connected via PATA adapter on an ATA-100 bus
3th, connected via PATA adapter on an ATA-66 bus

i understand you think that the seritek 1v4 would be tops..
and it may be.. seeing as they are promising 1.5gbps for each port..
the other cards i detailed do the same, but only feature 2 channels.

[supernova777]

seritek also has the:
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1ve2plus2/
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1ve2plus2/spec/
32/64 bit, 33/66MHz PCI

http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1ve4/
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1ve4/spec/
32/64 bit, 33/66MHz PCI

also if u check:
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1s2/spec/
32 bit, 33/66MHz PCI

"Developers eventually used the combined 64-bit and 66-MHz extension as a foundation, and, anticipating future needs, established 66-MHz and 133-MHz variants with a maximum bandwidth of 532 MB/s and 1064 MB/s respectively" ---http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI-X

quote from everymac.com re: g4 450mhz
"In the default configuration, this model has three open 33 MHz 64-bit PCI slots, and a 133 MHz 2X AGP slot occupied by the graphics card. It also has an open AirPort (802.11b) expansion slot."
so that is why these are not pci-x slots.. because pci-x is 66mhz 64-bit i think?

see also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_PCI

so the real question for these sata cards for use with g4 mac's..

33mhz 32bit pci max throughput
VS
33mhz 64bit pci max throughput

is there a drastic speed difference to use a pci sata 32bit vs pci sata 64bit card?

64bit
VS
32bit

[MacTron]

so the real question for these sata cards for use with g4 mac's..
33mhz 32bit pci max throughput
VS
33mhz 64bit pci max throughput
is there a drastic speed difference to use a pci sata 32bit vs pci sata 64bit card?

That's the question.
132MB/s versus 266MB/s
We need a test that show us that this 64 bits cards have a throughput between 132 and 266MB/s in a G4. That will prove that really works at 64 bits...

[Ozfer]

According to tech specs it is 64 bit. I would be interested In Seeing the speed difference. Lol and you guys called me crazy making up ports and speed that don't exist anyways software 4 way raid can beat 2 way hardware raid. Yes 66mhz 64 bit is pci-x and it's impossible to tell what's one it is by just looking at a picture so you can see why I thought it was PCI-x

What wod be interesting to benchmark is having your PCI sad setup by itself and haring low power or integrated gpu and a test with the same setup but a fancy PCI graphics card sound card/audio devices and some gigabit internet ports while downloading. You would see a speed hit.

Sorry for spelling mistakes I'm typing this up fast on my iphone

[Syntho]

Hey guys, I just bought that OWC SSD drive for my G4, so thanks to DieHard for linking it.

I saw in the OWC installation video that there's a 133/ATA and a 66/ATA area. It said 133 in the video but I'm guessing it's actually 100.

Is it worth it to have separate SSDs for different jobs? I could put at least one more SSD in there. That way I could have an OS drive so my DAW programs are fast, and a separate one for tacking/recording so it doesn't interfere with the performance of my OS HD.

I'll be using Pro tools 5.1.3 and Logic 6.3.1 and I don't know how much of a 'DFD' (direct from disk) thing it uses when using sample players. It seems optimal to have 3x SSD drives - one for OS, one for tracking, one for samples, but I've only got room for two ATA/100 drives.

How many SSDs would you use and how would you divide the tasks up?

[Ozfer]

If you have a SSD unless your doing some pretty intense file transfers 1 is fine.

Also guys here is a sonnet tempo on ebay 4 port sata mac pci-x and I believe pci 64 (they say it works with g4) compatible 4 raid card. Looks like it already had quite the bidding war but that would give you the best for space and performance in a G4.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sonnet-Tempo-SATA-X4i-4-Port-Serial-ATA-SATA-PCI-X-Card-/281263474347?pt=US_Internal_Port_Expansion_Cards&hash=item417c9c06ab

[Syntho]

So there won't be much of a difference if I use just one single SSD for everything? I always heard to leave your applications on one drive and record to another. Hmm..

[supernova777]

So there won't be much of a difference if I use just one single SSD for everything? I always heard to leave your applications on one drive and record to another. Hmm..

tuff to say if
SSD -> SSD copy  = faster
then moving files on the same drive.. but. it is FLASH rom or ram or whatever..
so its possible?
back in the day of course seperate disks was way faster due to the limitation of moving parts
the only reason u would need two SSD's tho is if u wanted more then 190GB of space..
as this 190gb limit for booting in os9 still applies to the ssds.. so with this in mind
it may be better to get two seperate 120gb SSD
then it would be to get a single 250gb
makes senses?

[supernova777]

If you have a SSD unless your doing some pretty intense file transfers 1 is fine.

Also guys here is a sonnet tempo on ebay 4 port sata mac pci-x and I believe pci 64 (they say it works with g4) compatible 4 raid card. Looks like it already had quite the bidding war but that would give you the best for space and performance in a G4.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sonnet-Tempo-SATA-X4i-4-Port-Serial-ATA-SATA-PCI-X-Card-/281263474347?pt=US_Internal_Port_Expansion_Cards&hash=item417c9c06ab

i was gonna post this one earlier but couldnt find anything @ http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_sata_x4i.html saying it supported booting mac os 9!
u will notice that they claim 3 Gb/s per port SATA II controller.. does that mean per port? or per card?

the sonnet cards that i have however use the firmtek rom's to get their mac os 9 compatibility
i believe the roms were originally made by firmtek's people
i also have some other cards that were made by a guy from oregon usa where he flashed the rom into a
generic silicon image sata card and they work then.. so its all about the actual software on the rom bios chip on the actual card
that makes it compatible otherwise they could all be compatible + recognized... amazing eh?

[supernova777]

on the topic of pci-x controllers... one thing that wasnt discussed is raid controllers
i have read that hte 640L highpoint rocketraid works out of the box and are bootable
for hackintosh's with pci-express slots...

i wonder if this card would be both powermac g4/g5 compatible
as well as hackintosh compatible

http://www.highpoint-tech.cn/USA/rr2224.htm

i almost ordered one a few months back
would be a real kick to find out if it actually DOES support mac os 9.. becuase things like this.. they frequently
just OMIT because they think noone wuld be even interested in it. (again, thanks to the elaborate funeral for mac os 9.. thanks steve;) but of course this was a requirement in his plan to convert everyone to osx swiftly the man greatly understoon the larger social mind + psyche hehe)

it would be awesome to find a PCI-X raid controller for raid 0/1/10/5 that is bootable + mac os 9 compatible aswell as compatible with g4s AND g5s AND hackintosh boxes running 10.5.x or 10.6.x (or even 10.7.x+)