Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Attaching Firewire800 drive speeds up SSD

A

altecXP

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 3, 2009
1,115
1
I have this odd problem on my i5 MBP. When I have no external drives attached AJA System test reports my SSD speed at about 227mb/s read and write. When I plug in a USB external drive the SSD reports the same speed. When I plug in a FW800 drive the speeds jumo to 234 - 245mb/s. When I unplug the FW800 drive they go back down.


Anyone else see this problem?
 
@OP

Problem? What problem? :)

1) it's just a benchmark

2) the difference you're reporting is minimal

3) and it's just linear speed. Random speed is what matters most for OS real life speed.

So: this phenomenon should be just a "curiosity". Not a problem, no practical consequences. Don't expect your Mac to be actually slower if the FW800 drive is unplugged.
 
I have seen another site report seeing this problem, and yes, if I am loosing almost 20mb/s by not having a FW drive plugged in I see that as a problem. It's an about 8% lose in its possible performance.

Why should I not expect to get the full capabilities of my SSD all the time?


I tested this on my desktop PC with an SSD (same brand) and it does not have this issue.
 
Get to know how SSDs work, what are linear speeds and random speeds, what matters most for real world performances, etc and maybe then you will be able to tell what's a "problem" and what's not. A good start is to read everything Anandtech has ever published about SSDs.

7-17mb/s of difference in LINEAR speeds is a non-issue, there's no way they can have any consequence in your real life usage.

And you don't know about the reliability of that benchmark.

You're talking about nothing, feel free to worry about it if you want. Just wanted to let you know that calling it a "problem" or blabbering about "the full capabilities of my SSD" is plain-dumb-wannabe-tech-savvy-but-not-one-actually speaking.
 
gianly1985 said:
worthless dribble......
Click to expand...

I know the different, and I know what the numbers mean. Are you honestly telling me that even thought the difference is minimal I should accept ANY performance drop from a $2,600+ laptop and $700 drive?

I have seen many people use AJA for their benchmark and recommend if over xBench.

Hay look here is a guy getting a near 50% jump from plugin in a FW drive: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/940805/

ANd here are a few sites showing the problem:
http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-MacBookProCore_i7-SATA-Bizarre.html
http://www.markc.me.uk/MarkC/Blog/Entries/2010/6/17_2010_Macbook_Pro_i7_-_Weird_SSD_Performance.html
 
altecXP said:
I know the different, and I know what the numbers mean. Are you honestly telling me that even thought the difference is minimal I should accept ANY performance drop from a $2,600+ laptop and $700 drive?
Click to expand...

I'll teach you a couple of new expressions: significant and non-significant. There's no "ANY" when you're talking about NUMBERS in SCIENCE/ENGINEERING.

Your drop is non-significant, no matter how much you paid the machine. By your reasoning, you should worry about a 0.1 mb/s drop :rolleyes:. A drop from 240mb/s to 227mb/s in linear speeds is non-significant realworld-performance-wise.

About the links, 2 of them are RAID setups and the performance drop is way higher than in your case.
 
gianly1985 said:
Get to know how SSDs work, what are linear speeds and random speeds, what matters most for real world performances, etc and maybe then you will be able to tell what's a "problem" and what's not. A good start is to read everything Anandtech has ever published about SSDs.

7-17mb/s of difference in LINEAR speeds is a non-issue, there's no way they can have any consequence in your real life usage.

And you don't know about the reliability of that benchmark.

You're talking about nothing, feel free to worry about it if you want. Just wanted to let you know that calling it a "problem" or blabbering about "the full capabilities of my SSD" is plain-dumb-wannabe-tech-savvy-but-not-one-actually speaking.
Click to expand...


+1

Benchmarks are good for somethings, but in a case like this it's worthless. You can go ahead and complain about this until your blue in the face, but I doubt you'll find the cause. It could also be a glitch in the benchmark software, since anyone with reasonable computer knowledge will know that simply plugging in a Firewire device will not speed up another drive, on another type of bus.

Here's an idea, go back to your mac and actually clock it with the drive plugged and unplugged, and if you can find a real slowdown in a real app, then it might be a reason to worry... otherwise...
 
green86 said:
+1
It could also be a glitch in the benchmark software, since anyone with reasonable computer knowledge will know that simply plugging in a Firewire device will not speed up another drive, on another type of bus.
Click to expand...
Someone with more than 'reasonable computer knowledge' would not define that as law. There is a driver problem here... OSX is riddled with random bugs that appear under a small set of circumstances.
Eddyisgreat said:
I kind of have to agree. It's admirable to want every last bit of performance but benchies are too finicky.
Click to expand...

They are, however, good for revealing issues like this.
 
RedReplicant said:
Someone with more than 'reasonable computer knowledge' would not define that as law. There is a driver problem here... OSX is riddled with random bugs that appear under a small set of circumstances.
Click to expand...

So, you can argue that plugging in a FW800 should actually speed up something? How. It could be a driver problem, but one disk on one bus should not affect another disk on another. Yea, I'll define that as law.
 
green86 said:
So, you can argue that plugging in a FW800 should actually speed up something? How. It could be a driver problem, but one disk on one bus should not affect another disk on another. Yea, I'll define that as law.
Click to expand...

It will not actually speed something else up... unless there is a problem that resolves itself when the firewire is plugged into. If you try to tell yourself that, as a rule, it's impossible for anything to speed up under any circumstance as a result of plugging into FW then you're ruling out a software issue by default.

This issue is repeatable and demonstrated by multiple people across multiple programs.
 
No, I'm not. I know exactly what I'm saying.

RedReplicant said:
Now you're confusing yourself. It will not actually speed something else up... unless there is a problem that resolves itself when the firewire is plugged into.
Click to expand...

There you go. Maybe you were confusing yourself. All I said was "anyone with reasonable computer knowledge will know that simply plugging in a Firewire device will not speed up another drive, on another type of bus", yet you said this wouldn't be defined as law :confused:

Edit: Looks like you were confused, as you changed the wording of your post :p
 
Ok, yes, reasonable computer knowledge will say that. Now, are you ruling out there being an issue because they apparently can't effect each other?
 
RedReplicant said:
It will not actually speed something else up... unless there is a problem that resolves itself when the firewire is plugged into. If you try to tell yourself that, as a rule, it's impossible for anything to speed up under any circumstance as a result of plugging into FW then you're ruling out a software issue by default.

This issue is repeatable and demonstrated by multiple people across multiple programs.
Click to expand...

That isn't what I said though. It's obviously a software glitch.
 
RedReplicant said:
Ok, yes, reasonable computer knowledge will say that. Now, are you ruling out there being an issue because they apparently can't effect each other?
Click to expand...

Read my above post. But I also don't think a 20 MB increase in linear transfer speed at speeds above 200 MB/s will yield a noticeable, real world difference.
 
I wonder if it effects normal HDDs too, since they are on the same bus... I don't have a FW anything to test with. :(
 
RedReplicant said:
I wonder if it effects normal HDDs too, since they are on the same bus... I don't have a FW anything to test with. :(
Click to expand...

I have a couple FireWire devices laying around. Which benchmark are people using? The issue here is that normal HDDs (especially laptop drives) don't usually have such a high transfer rate to begin with. I'd hypothesize and say it would only be a few MB difference, if any. Also, I think this problem is only affecting Macs on the new Arrandale platform (i5 & i7).
 
After reading this post I ran geek bench 64 bit, then promptly turned on my fw800 with a hitachi 500gb hd in it and the score was basically the same. To be sure I also rebooted my mbp with out the fw800 cable connected, same speeds, then connected fw800, no major difference, fw800 turned on, again little difference. There were times where w/o fw800 score inched out ahead, but I'm talking about like tops 10 point difference.

I have a mbp 2010 15" 4gb ram with a realssd c300 128gb. Ssd is in HD spot in mbp.

If there are any benchmarks programs you want me to try name them and I'll see if I get different results.
 
Tortri said:
After reading this post I ran geek bench 64 bit, then promptly turned on my fw800 with a hitachi 500gb hd in it and the score was basically the same. To be sure I also rebooted my mbp with out the fw800 cable connected, same speeds, then connected fw800, no major difference, fw800 turned on, again little difference. There were times where w/o fw800 score inched out ahead, but I'm talking about like tops 10 point difference.

I have a mbp 2010 15" 4gb ram with a realssd 300 128gb. Ssd is in HD spot in mbp.

If there are any benchmarks programs you want me to try name them and I'll see if I get different results.
Click to expand...

Geekbench has nothing to do with hard drive speed. It's only a measure of CPU and RAM performance... which isn't relevant to this thread.
 
green86 said:
Geekbench has nothing to do with hard drive speed. It's only a measure of CPU and RAM performance... which isn't relevant to this thread.
Click to expand...

D'oh, that would explain. Honestly I just seen someone mention it and downloaded it and gave it a try. I'll give xbench a try. I know that has a HD test. I'll post the results today.
 
#1 FW800 connected and turned on

Disk Test 346.80
Sequential 217.86
Uncached Write 235.73 144.73 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 230.69 130.52 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 136.20 39.86 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 409.59 205.86 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 849.70
Uncached Write 953.98 100.99 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 424.90 136.03 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2968.58 21.04 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 1032.03 191.50 MB/sec [256K blocks]



#2 FW800 completely disconnected

Disk Test 327.53
Sequential 202.58
Uncached Write 238.57 146.48 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 230.40 130.36 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 113.53 33.23 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 415.67 208.91 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 854.78
Uncached Write 999.74 105.83 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 424.20 135.80 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2772.32 19.65 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 1040.35 193.04 MB/sec [256K blocks]



#3 FW800 connected and turned on then turned off

Disk Test 322.09
Sequential 199.17
Uncached Write 233.55 143.39 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 223.78 126.61 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 112.86 33.03 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 404.47 203.28 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 841.31
Uncached Write 1014.78 107.43 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 411.11 131.61 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2745.92 19.46 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 1028.36 190.82 MB/sec [256K blocks]



The only thing I'm seeing in a big jump is Sequential Uncached Read [4K blocks] and Random Uncached Read / Uncached Write [4K blocks]. But honestly after looking at the numbers and comparing #3 and #2 then looking at #1 the only thing that FW800 turned on has going for it so far is just Sequential Uncached Read [4k blocks]. The rest is just minut couple MB here and there ahead of turned off compared to turned on. So yes FW800 connected and turned on is faster, but i'd be surprised if you could really see the difference with it off. My 2 cents
 
Tortri said:
FW800 connected and turned on

Disk Test 346.80
Sequential 217.86
Uncached Write 235.73 144.73 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 230.69 130.52 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 136.20 39.86 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 409.59 205.86 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 849.70
Uncached Write 953.98 100.99 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 424.90 136.03 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2968.58 21.04 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 1032.03 191.50 MB/sec [256K blocks]



FW800 completely disconnected

Disk Test 327.53
Sequential 202.58
Uncached Write 238.57 146.48 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 230.40 130.36 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 113.53 33.23 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 415.67 208.91 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 854.78
Uncached Write 999.74 105.83 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 424.20 135.80 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2772.32 19.65 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 1040.35 193.04 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Click to expand...

Haha I love it. Random writes and reads went up with it disconnected, which is where most of the performance comes in. So... I guess attaching a FW800 drive doesn't actually speed up performance then?:rolleyes:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back