Which is faster - Read/Write direct to FireWire Drive or Ultra/Serial ATA Drive?
Meekoe
many different interfaces Serial/Ultra ATA/USB 2.0/ and Firewire, to choose
from. My question is - which will give me the best performance for what I
need to do which is video editing and multitrack audio recording/editing. I
read a review on Tom's Hardware that Hatachi has a Ultra ATA 133 drive that
outperforms the best Serial ATA drives on the market right now.
http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/200311141/index.html
Anyway, advice from experienced users please. TIA
Arny Krueger
news:RXVFb.49655$pY.35791@fed1read04
I suspect that Tom is trying to making an important point. No modern hard
drive is mechanically faster than its electrical interface. Hard drives are
at their core mechanical devices. They mechanically access tracks, and they
mechanically spin data past their heads.
Case in point, ATA 133 has a theoretical capacity of 133 MB/sec, but the
fastest sustained DTR I've ever observed while running an audio or video
application on an ATA 133 drive on an ATA 133 controller was something like
1/4 of that or less.
The whole thing with interfaces is that getting mechanical speed is
sufficiently difficult that nobody wants to significantly compromise it with
a slow interface.
The major near-term benefit of serial ATA relates to elimination of those
relatively bulky, unreliable and expensive 80-wire cables and 40 pin
connectors. As silicon gets cheaper and faster, it becomes an attractive
replacement for vinyl, polyester and copper in bulk.
psandiford
FireWire has several variants and has specific pluses.
FireWire is intended to be an "external" bus. As such, all IEEE 1394
standards are capable of "hot swapping." This allows you to swap
drives without powering down the computer. (note: follow your OS's
recommendation for removing or unmounting a storage device) This is
wonderful for archiving a project or working several projects on
shifts.
(trivia) IEEE 1394 is seldom found. It is a first generation FireWire
that topped out at a theoretical 200 megabits per second; not reliably
fast enough for sustained video data transfer. (end trivia)
IEEE 1394a claims speeds of 400 megabits per second but I've seldom
seen faster than 320mbps. This is fast enough for capturing standard
DV (25) and handling the load from a NLE project with a few layers or
effects. You need to ensure your "bridge board," the interface that
connects the hard drives ATA66/100/133 interface to the FireWire
cable, is high quality. Oxford 911 is generally accepted as a good
bridge. Also, your hard drive inside the FireWire case must have good
sustained read/write specifications. This usually means it has a
spindle speed of 7200rpm and a fat/fast cache.
IEEE 1394b. Today this standard is claims 800mbps, theoretically
faster than many hard drives I've edited with. This is still leading
edge and I would not use it for uncompressed, multi-stream (if that is
where you are going). Some systems, i.e. the Macintosh G5, have this
interface but I have noted low sustained write speeds benchmarked.
Likely, this is because of an issue with certain logic boards I/O
controllers or first generation bridge boards. This standard will
kick in the future but I don't usually buy for "maybe tomorrow."
Summary: qualified Ultra or Serial ATA if you can live with your
drives inside the case and work with uncompressed/multi stream.
Standard DV 25 can work well with IEEE 1394a or better. In every
case, be careful. There are factors and variables (sustained r/w
speeds, spindle speeds) that can kill your work flow. As an
additional concern: all of these choices are using ATA drives. I
always buy ATA drives twice the size of my anticipated project size.
anthony.gosnell
> Summary: qualified Ultra or Serial ATA if you can live with your
> drives inside the case and work with uncompressed/multi stream.
You can get removable hard drive bays. These cost about 10$. All the
advantages of internal Ultra ATA or SCSI with the ability to swap and even
hotswap if your OS is up to it.
--
Anthony Gosnell
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Mike Dobony
interlaced at 2x to 4x the speed of a single drive! Of course all HD's need
to be identical to maximize the benefits.
--
Mike D.
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Irv Segal
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