SATA on a Dual 867MHz G4

[chroneos]

Lately I've been on an upgrade kick, and that focus has turned to my nearly five year-old Power Mac Dual 867MHz MDD G4. The machine is still extremely useful, and seemingly nowhere near obsolesence thus far, and before it begins to show its age, I'd like to soup it up a bit.

I've already done little things like add a USB 2.0 PCI card, which also allowed me to internalize my bluetooth adapter (as it also had an internal port). So at this point, the machine has USB 2.0 and Bluetooth effectively built-in. I've been looking into throwing a pair of 320GB HDs into it, however in its current state those would be PATA drives, not very encouraging, to say the least. So now I'm considering getting a pair of 320GB SATA HDs, which are, of course, faster--and cheaper! This will also necessitate the purchase of a SATA controller (no big deal, the price difference between PATA and SATA drives oughta even things out).

Basically what I plan to do initially is decommission the drives on the ATA/66 bus and replace them with SATA drives, and eventually do the same to the drives on the ATA/100 bus.

Ultimately my question is, would I really see any benefit in performance by doing this, or would I possibly be casting pearls before swine?

 

[crazzyeddie]

I think you may reach a point where you could theoretically saturate the PCI bus with traffic, but otherwise you should see an increase in speed using the SATA... the hard drives are the slowest part of the computer, after all.

I think its a great idea because if you buy a bunch of slower PATA drives and buy a new Mac Pro tomorrow then you'll be killing yourself.

 

[chroneos]

I think you may reach a point where you could theoretically saturate the PCI bus with traffic

Forgive me, I'm a bit outdated techwise and I'm half asleep, but at what point would PCI bus saturation be a risk? Would it be prudent to perhaps use one SATA controller per two drives, or would that not really matter?

 

[SmurfBoxMasta]

at what point would PCI bus saturation be a risk? Would it be prudent to perhaps use one SATA controller per two drives, or would that not really matter?

notta...........
nope...........

I've used 3 Sata drives (1-boot/1-scratch/1-final render storage) for a few years in my QS with a SIIG 4-ch card, with lots of heavy duty photoshopping and multi-tasking and about 7-10 other apps open at the same time and have yet to see any signs of saturation or other slowdowns of any kind. My mega-GB image renderings are always superquick and fun, as are file transfers & copying multiple layers, effects and transitions.

this is all WAY WAY faster than running from the internal bus and even the ATA/133 card & drives I used to have........

So FWIW, dont worry about saturation, be happy

 

[dex22]

....the hard drives are the slowest part of the computer, after all....

My mistake. I thought the user was the slowest part

 

[chroneos]

I've used 3 Sata drives (1-boot/1-scratch/1-final render storage)

So they are bootable without issue?

 

[SmurfBoxMasta]

So they are bootable without issue?

Yep, the SIIG I have now & the Firmtek I had prior to that were both bootable nottaproblemo......

however, with some of the older cards (Sonnets & Acards) you have to reformat your drives before the card will recognize them. But all the current cards I have seen do not have that limitation.....

 

[SmurfBoxMasta]

My mistake. I thought the user was the slowest part

unless of course, the user is in the computer, or vice-versa, hehehehe

 

[AlexMaximus]

I did that and it works great with the Raptor

Hi there,

I have the dual G4 1,42 and I swaped to SATA. It makes the whole system more responsive and faster. I would do it, however you want to go for the 150G HD Raptor which spins 10K as a boot disk! This way you have actually SCASI speed and than use your 320HD's as second or third drive for storage. This way you will feel a real gain in speed and eliminate this bottleneck once and for all.

 

[aquajet]

Ideally you could use a Raptor as your boot drive and then a large 7.2k or two on separate busses for the Home folder and apps. Theoretically, this could further increase performance because the computer is able access resources related to the OS and the Home folder and applications at the same time, rather than having to seek back and forth between those resources on the same mechanism.