"Mike,
Here's the results of my testing an Expert 18Gb ATA66 HD in a G4 Yikes 400 with the Acard. Driver used is SoftRAID 2.2.2. [Apple Drive Setup drivers could not be used-Mike]
I ran the same test as last time - 4 Photoshop 5.5 tests. The tests involved a 110Mb PS file with 99 layers. I timed opening, flattening, rotating and applying a 50pixel Gaussian Blur to the file in that order. The Quantum is [ATA/66 drive] 5400 RPM, the others 7200 as you know. All drives were defraged using Norton between tests on either bus.
Opening file:
- Quantum 6GB on ACard Bus 1:39
- Quantum 6GB on Yikes Bus 1:39
- Western Digital 18GB Expert on ACard Bus: 1:25
- Western Digital 18GB Expert on Yikes Bus: 1:21
- Seagate Barracuda 20GB on Yikes Bus: 1:13
Flattening Layers:
- Quantum 6GB on ACard Bus 0:31
- Quantum 6GB on Yikes Bus 0:31
- Western Digital 18GB Expert on ACard Bus: 0:27
- Western Digital 18GB Expert on Yikes Bus: 0:26
- Seagate Barracuda 20GB on Yikes Bus: 0:25
Rotating -90°:
- Quantum 6GB on ACard Bus: 0.02
- Quantum 6GB on Yikes Bus: 0.02
- Western Digital 18GB Expert on ACard Bus: 0:02
- Western Digital 18GB Expert on Yikes Bus: 0.02
- Seagate Barracuda 20GB on Yikes Bus: 0.02
Apply 50 pixel Gaussian Blur:
- Quantum 6GB on ACard Bus: 0.10
- Quantum 6GB on Yikes Bus: 0.10
- Western Digital 18GB Expert on Acard Bus: 0:10
- Western Digital 18GB Expert on Yikes Bus: 0.10
- Seagate Barracuda 20GB on Yikes Bus: 0.10
The next task was to duplicate a 640Mb Virtual PC 'C' drive image:
- Quantum 6GB on ACard Bus 1:22
- Quantum 6GB on Yikes Bus 1:22
- Western Digital 18GB Expert on ACard Bus: 1:25
- Western Digital 18GB Expert on Yikes Bus: 1:26
- Seagate Barracuda 20GB on Yikes Bus: 0:59
Copying the file resulted in a maximum reported copy speed of:
- Quantum 6GB on ACard Bus: 7.6MB/sec
- Quantum 6GB on Yikes Bus: 7.6MB/sec
- Western Digital 18GB Expert on Acard Bus: 7.5MB/sec
- Western Digital 18GB Expert on Yikes Bus: 7.9MB/sec
- Seagate Barracuda 20GB on Yikes Bus: 11MB/sec
As I previously found with the Quantum drive, the ACard does in no way produce a faster result than the onboard 33Mb bus. All this for basically no return! I am sorely disappointed. Maybe a different driver would produce a better result, but I really wonder if that is the case.
At this point, the TurboMax is still the winner for real-time everyday application usage with the standard Apple Drive Setup. No screwing around with third-party drivers
If you want a more detailed test carried out, let me know.
Best wishes
BBuoy
M A C M E C H A N I C S
"
