Hi all I'm looking to consolidate some of my drives and am wondering if you think this is a good way to go. I saw this quad bay HD on eBay for just $125. Looks O.K. what do you think?
Must be huge, it has 4 x 5.25"-bays!! for four disks, but only two cntrollers. (2 internal IDE ribbon cables with (2) connectors on each cable enabling the use of 4 IDE devices.) So two disks are sharing the bandwith of a controller, this means low speed. That's actually not the spec of FireWire.
I wouldn't go for that one. Go rather for a S-ATA-Box like the Seritek.
Yust m2c
Posts: 1208 | Location: CH | Registered: 08 September 2002
Sean - this is a basic Burley case - I have been running one of these for years but mine has removable trays and its from Cooldrives. The Burley cases are all the same no matter where you buy them from.
The one your looking at does not have removable trays but you can get them seperately and add it in. - I think it said you can purchase mobile rack.
The case is long - 15" long by 10.25" high by 7" wide.
I have mine connected with Dual channel FW meaning I have a FW cable plugged into the machine while another is plugged into a FW PCI card - it doubles your I/O speed.
I have the top two HD's as one mirror and the bottom two as another.
Posts: 2144 | Location: Chicago | Registered: 21 January 2001
Sean, RAID? What sort of RAID? - striped, the fast one ?
If having two striped RAIDs on it, you'll be at the usual FW bandwith, aka 30 - 40 MB/sec -->2 FW-bridges for 4 disks: with the higher riscs of dataloss, due to the RAID 0. This is not really fine for the intended purpose, the storage of your files.
shapps showed a way to make it faster - PCI-Card - and easier - mobile racks - ; but for that money you can directly buy a S-ATA, plus having the latest technology, aka multichannel - no bandwith to share, as S-ATA is by definition multichannel and faster.
I bet, in real world, with that "raided" FW-Box, you will not go faster than some 30 - 40 MB/sec, meanwhile with a Seritek-RAID 0 you'll be up to 162 MB/sec.
Posts: 1208 | Location: CH | Registered: 08 September 2002
ok - here is the deal - the FW box is slow - even with dual channel FW.
I also have 2 of the Seritek SATA boxes both in a mirror raid set up- - yes they are much faster then the FW - but their only SATA 1
Firmtek just release info an new box thats 2 drives like the ones I have already but their E-SATA which is much faster then SATA-1.
Its not on the market yet - but as soon as it is I will be getting two of them and another Sonnet Tempo-X 8 channel card.
The real problem with SATA is the fact that you are limited to the amount of actual drives you can connect - because everthing must be on its own channel - there is no chaining one to the next.
Apple really needs to add more PCI slots!!!!!
Posts: 2144 | Location: Chicago | Registered: 21 January 2001
I have the same box (except in the SATA150) setup and love it. Go for the 300GB option so you can use the new SATAII drives which have higher throughput. Grab one of the Sonnet 4x4 or Sonnet 8port SATA PCI cards (around $200), and you're off to the races.
And also, after using SATA for a while, FW400 feels so slow now when I have to use it... I can't wait for either eSATA built in to the MacBook Pro (hopefully), or using a PC Card to start hooking in to external SATA drives on set for speeding up backups.
Posts: 186 | Location: Atlanta, GA | Registered: 24 October 2000
A word of warning about that CoolDrives SATA case you linked above - - I purchased that exact case last summer and it was very very unstable - I couldnt get all 4 drives to mount at and each time I restarted the box it would be a different set of drives that mounted - there was no way in hell that the box was usuable for any type of RAID let alone trustworthy.
I had it plugged into a Sonnet Tempo-8 card and Sata1 to ESATA cables - I tried 2 different cards and 4 sets of cables and it did no good. I got an RMA from Cooldrives and they took it back immediately - but it then took them 7 months to refund my money.
Posts: 2144 | Location: Chicago | Registered: 21 January 2001
Shapps said: " I got an RMA from Cooldrives and they took it back immediately - but it then took them 7 months to refund my money."
Forget about them then. I'll do something else..........
Jason F said: "Sean-
I have the same box (except in the SATA150) setup and love it. Go for the 300GB option so you can use the new SATAII drives which have higher throughput. Grab one of the Sonnet 4x4 or Sonnet 8port SATA PCI cards (around $200), and you're off to the races.
And also, after using SATA for a while, FW400 feels so slow now when I have to use it... I can't wait for either eSATA built in to the MacBook Pro (hopefully), or using a PC Card to start hooking in to external SATA drives on set for speeding up backups. "
Jason, I'm not terribly fussed about the extra speed option. I just want to get good back up. That's the most important. You sound like you're getting ready to offload your current SATA 150 set-up. I might be interested in aquiring it from you for the right price. It is a 4 bay, right?
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It is a 4 bay, right?
