[jedH]

Correct me if I'm wrong...
But I believe that the STR for the fastest 3.5" 7.2k drives is 95MB/s & that in some instances they can hit 125MB/s.

This is not 100% verified yet, but by-all-accounts FW800 enclosures only hit 60MB/s.
I wouldn't expect them to hit FW800's theoretical maximum, but 60MB/s? Come on!!

Because I use Wifi for internet connectivity I've realised I have one other option on my mac mini (oct 09); Gigabit
Is it possible to get higher throughput via an enclosure using a Gigabit interface?

If not...
If I got an enclosure that only transferred at 60MB/s, is it total overkill to get a drive with a STR of 95MB/s?
Or could there be certain applications/instances where it may still be advantageous?

It has to be FW800 or Gigabit, as that's the only interfaces my Mini has :-(

Cheers

[jedH]

anyone?
sorry for bumping so early, just in real rush atm...

night

[continuum]

You can get 100MB/sec or more real-world out of GigE. I don't know if the Mac Mini's implementation is that fast or if your chosen enclosure can get that fast, though-- there's more variables than just that.

Considering that faster harddisks also tend to mask latency better, of course you would want a faster drive.

[jedH]

pretty sure the mini is, the enclosure will be the big question mark, have you ever looked at these sort of enclosures?
What did you mean in that last sentence, sorry 430am, bed time

continuum, on Oct 28 2009, 04:26 AM, said:

You can get 100MB/sec or more real-world out of GigE. I don't know if the Mac Mini's implementation is that fast or if your chosen enclosure can get that fast, though-- there's more variables than just that.

Considering that faster harddisks also tend to mask latency better, of course you would want a faster drive.

[continuum]

No, I haven't. I have a few small NAS's here but I have never benchmarked performance.

Considering you can't get a slower harddisk anyway, why bother looking for one?

[jedH]

Well it's faster than fw800 enclosures, most seem to top out at 80MB/s.
Maybe Gigabit enclosure will end up being the same, hope not... :-(

Which I guess brings me back to my original Qn:

If I got an enclosure that only transferred at 80MB/s, is it total overkill to get a drive with a STR of 95MB/s?
Or could there be certain applications/instances where it may still be advantageous?

goodnight, or morning i should say, 5am & off to bed...yikes

[Chewy509]

jedH, on Oct 28 2009, 04:53 AM, said:

If I got an enclosure that only transferred at 80MB/s, is it total overkill to get a drive with a STR of 95MB/s?
Or could there be certain applications/instances where it may still be advantageous?

If STR is your only concern, then yes, it's over kill.

BUT, what about IOPS. Drives with higher STRs, will also typically have higher IOPs (be it single-user or multi-user orientated), so while you may max out the STR on say reading a single 200MB file, you will still have plenty of room for random IO stuff (when the disk is the bottleneck and not the interface), where you may have 1000's of 4K reads and writes spread across the disk. What I'm trying to get at, is that STR is not the only measure of performance (and many would argue that it serves as a poor benchmark metric), and that IOPs for your given task should be the consideration as well.

PS. I live in a world where STR means nothing, but random IO is king.

[jedH]

Great, so it sounds like another important facet will also be hamstrung by 80MB/s :-(
Have you had any experience with external enclosures & compared Gigabit to FW800?

[Chewy509]

jedH, on Oct 28 2009, 01:44 PM, said:

Great, so it sounds like another important facet will also be hamstrung by 80MB/s :-(
Have you had any experience with external enclosures & compared Gigabit to FW800?

Umm, current top model drives that have to do 1000's of random 4K reads generally top out at 20-30MB/s ???

[bazza]

yes the faster 7.2k drives will do 60-130Meg/s STR
xp/vista over gigabit ethernet can do >100Meg/s if configured correctly
most cheap NAS's with gigabit ports will find it hard to even get 40Meg/s, similar to USB speeds