I’m thinking about buying myself an external hard drive for my TR1MP and the Sony Gigavault seems to be a good choice for an aspiring Sony whore. Now, I’m a bit torn between getting an IEEE1394 Firewire version or an USB 2.0 one. USB so far seems the winner, as it would allow me to plug my drive into lots of boxes that have no Firewire connector. Firewire has the benefit that it can be plugged into Macs, which I really don’t care about too much. Both interfaces exceed the maximum transfer rate of any hard drive by a wide margin so speed isn’t really an issue—or is it?
Or—am I completely missing the boat and is there a superb little external drive by some other manufacturer that kicks the Gigavault’s ass by a wide margin? You tell me.
USB will work with newer macs as well. USB2.0 is supposed to have a speed advantage over firewire, unless its the newer firewire, 800, I think.
My only Firewire device is my DV camera, everything else I buy USB…it’s just easier and most people have USB, where I only know a limited amount of PCs with firewire.
[quote author=“tifosiv122”]USB will work with newer macs as well. USB2.0 is supposed to have a speed advantage over firewire, unless its the newer firewire, 800, I think.
Nominally, yes. USB 2 is 480 Mbps and Firewire is 400 Mbps. Firewire devices use their own controller chips rather than the actual CPU like USB (remember it was cooked up by Intel). USB devices also share bandwidth on the USB bus. IIRC, Firewire devices are up to 30% faster in the real world than USB2 devices.
I have the firewire 80 gb gigavault. There are 2 interfaces..the 6 pin and 4 pin one. Our TR’s have the 4 pin one and that really sux since it means that the giga vault drive needs to be connected to AC as well..it’s battery is no good wiht our TR’s. I think the USB one does not have such problems. Also, as far as the transfer speeds go, I was able to transfer 700 mb in just about a minute to my giga vault drive. As you can see thats no where close to 400 Mbps but those kind of transfer rates need a faster hdd and faster internal memory (for the giga vault drive) too! I’m sure you will notice approx the same transfer rates for the USB drive.
USB2 is faster than Firewire on paper. USB2 is a “dumb” interface and requires a lot of CPU overhead in order to reach top performance. Firewire has less overhead because of its supporting chipsets. The Oxford 911 (and 922) chipsets alleviate the work the CPU has to do to enable maximum throughput. At any rate, it really doesn’t matter which is faster since most hard disks can’t actually saturate the a 50-60MB/s (400-480Mb/s) bus. The best portable hard disks nowadays can only sustain 20-25MB/s max.
That 20-25MB/s figure looks too low. My Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 drives get a good deal more than that when reading. We’re talking at least 30MB/s here.
Unfortunately, with my 3ware RAID5 controller, I see none of that speed. :evil:
My bad…I had a typo. I meant portable hard disk and not desktop hard disk. Even so, my point is that the speed of either interface is moot since most current products aren’t hitting the ceiling yet.
And even though desktop hard drives have high throughput on benchmarks, you will find that in real world usage the numbers are not as high.
[quote author=“gr00vy0ne”]And even though desktop hard drives have high throughput on benchmarks, you will find that in real world usage the numbers are not as high.
I’m in the process of putting together a HTPC. Truth be told, the machine’s been in the making for over a year; I’m just lazy about it. I’ve got everything I need installed and running:[list][*]Lian Li PC-6070B tower case (attractive; lots of bays)
[*]3ware RAID5 controller (reliable)
[*]4 x Internal DiamondMax Plus 9 (cheap)
[*]1 x External Western Digital Caviar (cuz you sometimes need it)
[*]2 x Internal DVD-ROM (had them)
[*]1 x Internal DVD+R/+RW (need it)
[*]1 x Internal CD-RW (for fast CD burns)
[*]Radeon 9500 Pro + HDTV dongle (progressive scan)
[*]M-Audio Revolution 7.1 (can’t live without it)
[*]Dual-port 10/100 Ethernet NIC (cheap; bought before I broke down and got a real router)
[*] Seasonic Super Tornado (unlike what its name implies, it’s very quiet and efficient)
[*] Athlon XP 2500+ with Swiftech MCX-462 heatsink (so I can use a quiet fan)
[*] 512MB Crucial RAM (doubt I’ll need more than that in a HTPC)
[/list:u]I just need time to redo the software installation, get a Hauppauge 250 card, and find a decent HDTV tuner. Much, much harder than it sounds ... damn the emerging DTV standards! :evil: :evil: :evil:
I’m also thinking of getting a different case. Something like the SilverStone LC-01, which would actually fit inside an AV rack (unlike the Lian Li), would be a nice move IMO.
Anyway, back to the 3ware issue. Based on the “feel” I get when using the system and from what an (older) version of HD Tach told me, putting 4 hard drives together doesn’t make the storage subsystem 4 times faster. In fact, I would wager I’m barely getting the performance of even 1 drive. Last I bothered to benchmark it, the Windows PerfMon was telling me reads were around 30MB/s. Ouch. :shock:
[quote author=“CRYPTiC”]I’m in the process of putting together a HTPC. Truth be told, the machine’s been in the making for over a year; I’m just lazy about it. I’ve got everything I need installed and running:[list][*]Lian Li PC-6070B tower case (attractive; lots of bays)
[*]3ware RAID5 controller (reliable)
[*]4 x Internal DiamondMax Plus 9 (cheap)
[*]1 x External Western Digital Caviar (cuz you sometimes need it)
[*]2 x Internal DVD-ROM (had them)
[*]1 x Internal DVD+R/+RW (need it)
[*]1 x Internal CD-RW (for fast CD burns)
[*]Radeon 9500 Pro + HDTV dongle (progressive scan)
[*]M-Audio Revolution 7.1 (can’t live without it)
[*]Dual-port 10/100 Ethernet NIC (cheap; bought before I broke down and got a real router)
[*] Seasonic Super Tornado (unlike what its name implies, it’s very quiet and efficient)
[*] Athlon XP 2500+ with Swiftech MCX-462 heatsink (so I can use a quiet fan)
[*] 512MB Crucial RAM (doubt I’ll need more than that in a HTPC)
[/list:u]I just need time to redo the software installation, get a Hauppauge 250 card, and find a decent HDTV tuner. Much, much harder than it sounds ... damn the emerging DTV standards! :evil: :evil: :evil:
I’m also thinking of getting a different case. Something like the SilverStone LC-01, which would actually fit inside an AV rack (unlike the Lian Li), would be a nice move IMO.
Anyway, back to the 3ware issue. Based on the “feel” I get when using the system and from what an (older) version of HD Tach told me, putting 4 hard drives together doesn’t make the storage subsystem 4 times faster. In fact, I would wager I’m barely getting the performance of even 1 drive. Last I bothered to benchmark it, the Windows PerfMon was telling me reads were around 30MB/s. Ouch. :shock:
me dumb, what’s a HTPC? i’ve sorta got an idea of what your doing, and when you get it all done can you post a pic of it
[quote author=“diego”]
me dumb, what’s a HTPC? i’ve sorta got an idea of what your doing, and when you get it all done can you post a pic of it
Hyperthreaded PC. Hyperthread (certain CPUs with 800mhz Front Side Bus) make basically 2 CPUs from 1. This is good for applications like Photoshop which will use both CPUs.
I have a HTPC, I wouldn’t buy another one without it (desktop).
[quote author=“tifosiv122”][quote author=“diego”]
me dumb, what’s a HTPC? i’ve sorta got an idea of what your doing, and when you get it all done can you post a pic of it
Hyperthreaded PC. Hyperthread (certain CPUs with 800mhz Front Side Bus) make basically 2 CPUs from 1. This is good for applications like Photoshop which will use both CPUs.
I have a HTPC, I wouldn’t buy another one without it (desktop).
Erik
sounds cool, might make one of those in a few years as an entertainment computer hooked up to a 40” lcd and some huge soundsystem
