I have a Hitachi 1TB drive I use for playing back 1080P encodes. Just came across the fact that I need to force 3G mode on the drive. It's a DOS only utility called Hitachi Feature Tool. I'm planning to boot into Windows and force 3G mode there, this will carryover to OSX too correct? Also any downsides? I have a 500Gb stock boot drive that came with my 06 Mac Pro too, anyone know if this needs to be forced as well (jumper or software), and how can I verify that it worked in OSX. Any tips or incite are greatly appreciated.
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Worth it to force 3Gb/s mode on HDD
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Unless you are RAIDing it with other drives on the same SATA backplane, I don't think upping it matters at all. Very very few individual drives get anywhere near 150MB/s sustained read rates.
Evidently the 3Gb/sec rate also draws a bit more juice as I have read reviews that say battery life is better with a 1.5Gb/s unit (or at least at that setting). No issue in a Mac Pro, of course, but...
There is some overhead on all interfaces... SATA is no different. 1.5 Gbps SATA I think usually tops out at about 125-130 MBps real world; so it's not inconceivable that you'd on occasion be hitting the ceiling, though not often and not in a manner you'd ever notice. It would help for burst rates though, I guess.
And no, I don't see how it could cross over to OS X, unless you're doing something to the firmware of the drive or physically changing a jumper.
And no, I don't see how it could cross over to OS X, unless you're doing something to the firmware of the drive or physically changing a jumper.
Thanks for all your replies. Lots of good feedback. I came across this at barefeats http://www.barefeats.com/hard79.html , Seems there are some unexpected gains to be had, especially for my hitachi drive. Anyway Barefeats says they used the hitachi DOS tool to force 3G and it carried to OSX (think its firmware based change), so I made a boot CD and gave it a shot. Booted my mac pro from the CD and DOS loaded but gave me an error about no mouse found. My keyboard didn't work either, tried multiple times and even booting windows first but still no luck. Had the application running but could not get any kind of input device to work. I was using a MS wired mouse and apple wired keyboard plugged straight into my front USB ports. Forcing 3G on the drive isn't a big deal to me at all anymore but this no input device situation in DOS has peaked my interest. Any ideas appreciated.
DOS does not natively support or recognize USB.
Somebody (Panasonic?) did make DOS USB drivers so if you search those out and add them to your autoexec.bat/config.sys file, this should hopefully get your keyboard and mouse to work.
Somebody (Panasonic?) did make DOS USB drivers so if you search those out and add them to your autoexec.bat/config.sys file, this should hopefully get your keyboard and mouse to work.
Is there any way to see from within OS X what mode one's drives are in?
Any luck with getting the USB drivers?
Thanks,
Hunter
Any luck with getting the USB drivers?
Thanks,
Hunter
Find a friend with a PC and use theirs?
You'd better hurry quick before the last few Windows PCs vanish from the world.
You'd better hurry quick before the last few Windows PCs vanish from the world.