Faster, Quieter, Cooler? SCSI vs ATA HDs in a B&W

12 posts / 0 new
Last post
Offline
Last seen: 10 years 11 months ago
Joined: Dec 22 2006 - 15:53
Posts: 7
Faster, Quieter, Cooler? SCSI vs ATA HDs in a B&W

about this time last year i picked up a B&W 400 at a thrift store for 12 dollars and threw some RAM in it to find that not only did it work, (!) but it sounded like a gerbil was gnawing on the hard drives at all times. the vibration from at least on of the old big SCSI drives is enough to make the entire desk shake. it's really quite frightening.

at any rate, i was won'dren what you all respect in terms of drives in your G3 and G4 towers. should i buy some atas to throw in there?

oh and if anyone has an extra "U" bracket, let me know...

Jon
Jon's picture
Offline
Last seen: 13 years 7 months ago
Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
Posts: 2804
What Rev is the mobo? If it'

What Rev is the mobo? If it's a Rev 1 it may have issues with drive corruption on larger drives and flaky slave support. A PCI ATA/SATA card will solve that, or a mobo swap. SCSI can give you access to enterprise grade drives, but depending on what you get it may be spendy. It is a G3 after all...

iamdigitalman's picture
Offline
Last seen: 2 years 5 months ago
Joined: Mar 1 2004 - 22:18
Posts: 629
Dive corruption with large dr

Dive corruption with large drives my butt*. I am using a Rev. 1 B&W (on it's 2ND rev. 1 board, hey, they're cheaper), and have the internal bus hooked to a 120gb hard drive, the almost bus limit. for 6 months now it has been fast, reliable, and quiet. no corruption what so ever. I am a bit leary of slave drives, so i only have one on here.

but yeahATA133 is the best if you want speed. I personally find the 7200 RPM drive on the ATA33 bus (it being a ATA133 drive) plenty fast. if I had a ATA133 card in there, it would probibly cause a black hole it's so fast. Smile

hope that helps. and just remember time (and speed) are relative to the observer. what's fast to me may not be fast to you.

-digital Wink

*Edited for language by DrW. Watch it.

Jon
Jon's picture
Offline
Last seen: 13 years 7 months ago
Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
Posts: 2804
I've never had any problems m

I've never had any problems myself on my Rev 1, but the reports are on the web.

protocol6v's picture
Offline
Last seen: 14 years 6 months ago
Joined: Apr 21 2006 - 20:58
Posts: 339
I had a Rev. 1 300MHz, with 2

I had a Rev. 1 300MHz, with 2x 200GB ATA drives (both at the 128gig limit for a while until I started using the speedtools highcap driver) and not once did I have a problem.

Offline
Last seen: 1 year 11 months ago
Joined: Sep 23 2005 - 13:29
Posts: 316
Re: Dive corruption with large dr


but yeahATA133 is the best if you want speed. I personally find the 7200 RPM drive on the ATA33 bus (it being a ATA133 drive) plenty fast. if I had a ATA133 card in there, it would probibly cause a black hole it's so fast. Smile

*Edited for language by DrW. Watch it.

oh come on. seriously, this is the most uptight forum i have ever been a member of...

Anyway, you'd THINK that ATA133 would be SCREAMING fast, but... i installed a sonnet tempo trio in my sawtooth to get large volume support, and... yes, it IS faster than ATA33, but it is not nearly as fast as i would have expected it tto be, it really was a somewhat negligeable difference. (of course, it gave me USB2, some extra firewire ports, large volume support... and somewhat faster disc acess, so all in all it was still worth it.)

/Bill

Offline
Last seen: 10 years 11 months ago
Joined: Dec 22 2006 - 15:53
Posts: 7
hmmmm...

well i'm not exactly sure what the board is, as far as i can tell it is a rev 2, but i don't remember seeing any markings for it. i think i'm gonna try and go for an SATA controler if i can, maybe use some ata drives in the mean time.

because the than is L O U D.

i plan on using the machine for video conversion (from VHS, beta to dvd) for a while before retiring it to a media center if i can find a tuner card for cheap enough...

Dr. Webster's picture
Offline
Last seen: 19 hours 31 min ago
Joined: Dec 19 2003 - 17:34
Posts: 1760
Re: Dive corruption with large dr


oh come on. seriously, this is the most uptight forum i have ever been a member of...

Hey, buddy, I don't make the rules. If you want to complain about what language isn't permitted here, feel free to e-mail the site's owner, Tom Owad.

iamdigitalman's picture
Offline
Last seen: 2 years 5 months ago
Joined: Mar 1 2004 - 22:18
Posts: 629
right on. like I said, my

right on.

like I said, my ass. as in Donkey. so, you edited it wrong.

remember, words can have several different meanings, and not all of them are swears perse.

and what is this hicap driver? even though I dont have a drive above the bus limit, I might be getting a 320gb drive soon, as prices are falling...

-digital Wink

coius's picture
Offline
Last seen: 10 years 9 months ago
Joined: Aug 25 2004 - 13:56
Posts: 1975
As far as LBA HDD Size allocation

I noticed that OS X will overlook the 128GB IDE Hard drive limit.  I Threw a 500GB IDE Hard drive in mine to recover data, and noticed that OS X saw the full 500GB. Although the drive it said it was was 128, the partition showed the full 500GB.
So don't be worried about the limit.  OS X will even see past the limit in a Beige G3 OS X machine (tried it myself on my Beige MT) so don't worry about putting a drive in  higher than 128 into the system.  It should be fine as long as you have OS X (10.3 and higher is what I  have tried)

protocol6v's picture
Offline
Last seen: 14 years 6 months ago
Joined: Apr 21 2006 - 20:58
Posts: 339
It may see the full 500 gigs

It may see the full 500GB but if you format the drive in disk utility, it will not create a partition above 128GB. And, if I've read somewhere correctly, it will have trouble reading any data above the 128GB mark.

You can see that driver here...

http://www.speedtools.com/ATA6.shtml

May not be worth it to some people, but I had the company I work for buy it. We use it on all the older G3s and some G4s.

Dr. Webster's picture
Offline
Last seen: 19 hours 31 min ago
Joined: Dec 19 2003 - 17:34
Posts: 1760
Re: right on.

like I said, my ass. as in Donkey. so, you edited it wrong.

remember, words can have several different meanings, and not all of them are swears perse.

No, you meant it as in your rear end. I don't have the time or inclination to play games with you. Thread locked.

Topic locked