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FireWire for 75% Better Mac mini Disk Performance
peterdaly writes "As a proud new owner of a Mac mini, I quickly discovered the internal hard drive performance was so pathetic compared to what I was used to that I needed to do something about it ... preferably on the cheap. I ended up trying a FireWire attached storage enclosure and using an older 80GB drive I had in my closet from a dead PC. My mini got about a 75 percent disk performance increase for about $50 (or $100 if you need a drive). Here is a benchmark of before and after as well as information about my research and upgrade. If you already have at least 512MB RAM, this may be the best performance bang for your buck if you're looking for your mini to be faster and more responsive."
a year ago, we stuck with hp while deciding upon a new standard laptop as the nc6000's had 5400 rpm drives vs a couple ibm units we were evaluating which had 4200rpm's. I wonder if anyone could ever decommoditize themselves as a pc maker by promising to sell quicker machines at a minor price premium - how much more would it cost to install 512MB and a 7200rpm drive instead of 256MB and 5400rpm?
ostiguy
The form factor sold the machine for me - I don't want to go adding an external drive to the machine, even for a performance boost. I knew I wouldn't be playing Unreal Tournament 2k4 or DooM3 on the machine, I bought it to have a small form factor desktop in addition to my laptop.
That said, the findings of improved speed with an external firewire drive is hardly surprising. Laptop hard drives (which the Mini uses) are notoriously slow, and if you're one of those who got a 4200 RPM drive with their Mini it's even worse than normal.
Still, nifty to know it works.
I'm curious though - has anyone replaced their mini's hard drive with a higher RPM laptop drive? Did that help matters much? I wouldn't mind going for a speed upgrade if I can keep the sleek, tiny form factor =)
-Amich
There is some truth to what you say.
;-)
However, there are two other aspects you fail to acknowlege.
Firstly, most people, most of the time, are not waiting for their computer to do something. It's the chair-to-computer interface that is the bottleneck (people interacting with their software), so an increase in efficiency here is a big boost in (what I would call) performance. There's a lot more to performance than GFLOPS - remember, a computer is a tool, not an end in itself.
Secondly (and perhaps less importantly), although the specs of Macs might not be as great as PCs, the quality of their componentry is arguably better. Macs, in general, have a low hardware fail rate, and this could be attributed to better (albeit, less powerful) hardware. Many 'high-performance' PCs, especially those that are relatively cheap, are not made by Tier 1 companies from reliable hardware*.
*This is my opinion only, and hasn't been extensively researched.
Yes. In my mind as an IT person, one of the chief advantages of a Mac is that you can boot any Mac with built-in FireWire from a FireWire disk - including an iPod.
You can prevent this from happening by setting an Open Firmware password, but for re-imaging machines, it is a godsend.
As a bonus for those of us who want more utility out of our portable boot disks, all FireWire-equipped PowerBooks and any FireWire equipped desktop since some of the later G4s have the ability to boot in what Apple appropriately calles "FireWire disk mode". Pressing the "T" key at startup turns your $2500.00 Mac into a $100.00 firewire disk enclosure.
Dollars signs aside, I can assure you that FireWire disk mode is quite gratifying to watch when you've done something stupid to your machine and rendered it unbootable.
I don't know if the same thing is possible with USB and PCs, but I know that trying to recover Windows 2000 by using a FireWire disk enclosure is impossible, and I assume this holds true for XP as well.
BACKGROUND :-)
t icles/mini/
t icles/mini/dock/
l e+IDC+2.5%22+IDE+Laptop+Gender+Changer
:-( But here is the plan:
I bought my mini for the software. Years ago I paid for a miniDV camcorder, because I knew that someday I would be able to afford a computer to edit the footage with. That day finally came!
But the HDD stinks. External SATA is possible, and the best answer. Here's why...
OPTIONS
FW 400
While I *might* go for an external FW 400 solution, the mini only has one FW port... and copying DV material from a camcorder to a FW HDD on the same channel is a no-no.
USB 2.0
slower than FW 400 on the mini, according to what I've read. But more importantly, the mini won't boot from USB.
External 3.5" PATA
Ah, now we're talking! Check out these articles: 4 sweet solutions, all of which allow use of 3.5" HDDs on the mini's own ATA/100 controller:
mini in a PC box
http://www.appletalk.com.au/articles/miniserver/
mini with an external drive box housing an ATA HDD
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/ar
mini ensconsed in a Centris 660
(Check out the XBench scores table)
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/ar
And best of all (IMHO), the purple mini
http://macmod.com/content/view/273/2/
External 3.5" SATA
The problem with the external PATA solutions is that the form factor sucks. Which got me thinking: If I could only use one of those fancy new SATA cables...
PARTS LIST
1. PATA to SATA bridgeboard:
http://www.google.com/search?q=PATA2SATA
2. IDE Hard Drive Cable Adapter - 2.5'' to 3.5''
http://www.google.com/search?q=StarTech+IDE4044
3. 44 Pin Male to Male IDC 2.5" IDE Laptop Gender Changer
http://www.google.com/search?q=+44+Pin+Male+to+Ma
DETAILS
I don't yet have the money to do this project, or you would have already heard the results.
Assemble the three components together (and trim off the unneeded power connection from the 2.5" to 3.5" cable adapter). You now have an assembly that fits within the space normally occupied by the mini's 2.5" HDD.
WARNING: the real unknown is whether or not you can actually then snake an SATA cable from the bridge board and out the back (or side) of the mini. But I think it will work. Assuming it does...
RESULTS
There are more and more SATA drive enclosures hitting the market. This year the trend is multiplexing backplanes, so that you can RAID multiple SATA drives in the enclosure and connect them via one channe back to the computer.
Pick an attractive SATA drive enclosure, plug it in, connect it to the mini, and off you go!
Phil Lawrence
--
feel free to email me if you'd like details about the success or failure of the project, once I get the parts together