Real Life SATA-PCI speed of PowerMac G4s

Thank you Myaka!

So for the ATA-HDD you get 22,68MB/s and for the SSD about 45MB/s. That is interesting, since you get results near to my results on the SATA-Bus with normal HDDs (remember I had between 33-39MB/s) and not the 80-100MB/s as elsewhere stated for SATA-Drives etc.

@ Glen Dogget:

Glen, could you copy a file for me and count the time?

You said "There is usually some variation with these tests when you repeat them." Yes, I know, but in my case it was the small values that changed from 1-2MB to 18MB/s and the big values varied from 20-33MB/s. Try Xbench several time and save the results and than at the end compare them. I also always did a restart and waited until I did not hear "crunching" from the Boot-Drives anymore and then started the tests. Maybe sometimes I did not wait long enough or the boot-drive did take different times to complete boot-up everytime.

Hey, Japamac, if your are here again, I would like you to answer in this thread! You made benchmarks with your G4 and several connection types. As my first post explains, counting the time without a benchmark tool it seems to be much slower.

Another thing I recently discovered is, that formatting a Drive to FAT-32 takes long. Transfering big files 5-7GB results in transfer rates of 1-2MB/s via SATA-PCI.

Could you please transfer a 5GB file or bigger, manually via SATA-PCI from one drive to another (both HFS+) and count the time? (Mac OS X is very near to exact when prediciting the time it will take, btw.!). Then 2nd task, could you write a files from a HFS+ HDD to a FAT-32 Drive via SATA-PCI, please?

I only have two SATA-PCI cards and currently only one PowerMac G4 assembled, so I can not do comparative tests on my own.

Again, please do not use a benchmark tool, stop the time and devide the file-size by the time elapsed.

I would be so very thankful!

Strange enough, now, after having copied several .vob files to a FAT-32 HDD, I had folders that copied with 1MB/s as I already mentioned and others with about 40MB/s. All folders are 5-7GB. And than again some take hours (i.e. have 1-3MB/s transfer rate).

Hi,

thanks for participating and sharing your experiences. So, you had 1-2GB/min., that is about 16-32MB/s?

Do not know, whether the external SATA ports are really faster, but I do not believe, that they use another firmware, than they use for the Firmtek/Sonnet cards with internal ports. (I have a Sonnet 2xinternal, and Sonnet Cards are known to have the Firmtek firmware and register as such in the system profiler. Also I tested it under both 10.4 and 10.5. There are different firmwares for 10.4 and 10.5, though both work under both OSes.)

I assume using Migration Assistant takes that long, because it is indexing and searching and defragmenting files and trying to keep the overal structure. The same is the case with Super Duper, it is very slow, when making a system backup, because it defragments all files.

Here http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=17582354#post17582354 is another person that had a max. of 50MB/s. So I more and more doubt, that benchmark tools really say anything in the Mac world.

I would really like Japamac to answer in this thread, because he has done several benchmarks and is well respected in the apple community. If a person like him would redo the tests and stop the time, people would believe me and not just claim they are right because of Xbench or AJA. Funny these people do not even want to retest by copying manually. Of course, it would tell them that their super fast SATA-SSDs (which are promoted with 200-500MB/s) can't even bring more than an old SATA-HDD.

I would find it really honorable, if Japamac would do the test and confess that his virtual benchmark testing was wrong. This would even lift up my respect for him, instead of loosing his face, if that is his concern (if that is still the trouble for modern japanese people anyway).

Yes, Sonnet also claims their cards reach SATA-3 speeds for the newest drives. Even in a G5 a SATA-3 card only works as SATA-1, so that is just marketing.

Thanks for the links. I know barefeats, but I think they also use benchmark tools, when testing drive speeds.

Can you do me a favour and take a big file (2-5GB is ok), copy it manually and stop the time and report back, please? DO NOT USE Benchmark Tools.

On your RAM point in the message before. I tested it, when copying files (not working with them like in Logic studio or Photoshop), it does not matter how much RAM you have. (espeacially when comparing 1GB ot 1,5GB). Just be sure to have 256MB for OS X only. The rest will take 128-512MB. You can test that, too, if you like. It will not change the copy speed, if you have more than 1GB (I didn't test 768MB, but even that could be enough).

Hi,

have you tried repairing permissions and resetting PMU? If you have the install disc, start from it and run all the disk utility tests. If not (better anyway): start in single user mode and do the following:

1. type: sbin_fsck ßyf (? or ß is another character on english keyboards, it is the second key after the backshift key)

2. press return

3. again

4. type: ctrl. d

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doing the copying on the same drive is ok, too. It should be faster than 40MB/s still, if it would reach SATA-HDD speeds. If it is slower, than it shows, that the PCI controller can't go over 40MB/s.