-
SATA questions
Will I see an increase in speed over ULTRA ATA if I install a SATA card so I can install SATA drives internally in my dual 1 gig quicksilver PM G4?
Will the drives run cooler?
If so, what card do you suggest that will allow me to install two internal drives?
Do you know if i can install the drive in drive position 1 and 2? I find that using the sled in drive position 3 with one drive on top of the other produces more heat.
If I use an external firewire enclosure, will SATA drives in the external case be compatible with my G4 without an external SATA card?
Will an external SATA enclosure produce faster speeds than a firewire 800 enclosure? Will that speed matter when editing with standard def DV?
-
3 Replies
-
[eyecamiam] “Will I see an increase in speed over ULTRA ATA if I install a SATA card so I can install SATA drives internally in my dual 1 gig quicksilver PM G4?”
Anytime you go from parallel ATA to serial ATA you’ll observe an increase in transfer rates.
[eyecamiam] “Will the drives run cooler?”
Probably the same temp as any other internal hard drive.
[eyecamiam] “If so, what card do you suggest that will allow me to install two internal drives?”
Any of the brand name SATA cards will do. Make sure you get a straight PCI card and not a PCI-X or PCI-e for your G4.
[eyecamiam] “Do you know if i can install the drive in drive position 1 and 2?”
Can’t help you there.
[eyecamiam] “If I use an external firewire enclosure, will SATA drives in the external case be compatible with my G4 without an external SATA card?”
Don’t know if you can install serial ATA in a FW enclosure. Parallel ATA is fine. Regardless, there is a FW bridge board inside the enclosure that allows ATA drives to connect to the FW BUS and then to your Mac via the firewire cable. You don’t need an internal SATA controller card for this.
[eyecamiam] “Will an external SATA enclosure produce faster speeds than a firewire 800 enclosure?”
Yep.
[eyecamiam] “Will that speed matter when editing with standard def DV?”
Depends on how many streams of SD DV you want to edit with, along with each stream’s companion audio tracks. I notice a substantial speed bump with SATA over FW when editing a 3 multicam project with 6-10 audio tracks. If you’re only cutting one or two video tracks firewire will probably be sufficient.
– Don
“Please take a moment to fill out your profile, including your computer system and relevant software. Help us help you.”
-
thanks
-
May I mention, for greater flexibility with your new SATA drives, you can use an exclosure which has FW800, USB and eSATA external connections. We just bought one from Other World Computing and they run $110.
This flexibility is nice because I can hook up this drive via SATA on my home rig and FW800 on a clients work station.
The only caveat I have found so far in some of these multi format enclosures with SATA, they only do external SATA when an SATA format drive is installed. This was the case with a CoolDrives exclosure we tried. An SATA drive would allow for USB, FW and eSATA, but an ATA drive only did USB and FW. We subsequently found the OWC case that did FW800 instead of just FW, and that works out better for us when connecting on our clienst workstation.
Also keep in mind, once you head down the SATA path, you have many options for building raids and running large numbers of drives off the PCI SATA card. When you start to explore the more powerful eSATA raid setups, that data rates compete with the scsi-320 systems costing more cabage.
Folks have reported success with many brands. We have chosen the Maxtor Maxline drives. Recently when we bought a new drive from a flakey seller on Ebay, Maxtor had a new HD in our hands within a couple days. 🙂
good luck.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up