Coss Posted September 25, 2003 Author Report Share Posted September 25, 2003 Most kind, I reckon I'll get the 17" soon and that may solve my problems Thanks Coss Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adikgede Posted September 25, 2003 Report Share Posted September 25, 2003 For most situations a laptop is a competent desktop replacement, but they don't scale very well, once you have maxed out RAM there really isn't anywhere to go. This could be a major drawback if a new laptop doesn't meet your performance hopes. For the cost of a 17" PowerBook you can get a G5 dually that can be upgraded substantially. The CPU is much faster, the memory bus is faster and 8Gb memory capacity should allow you plenty of room to grow into. if a pair of 7200 rpm Serial ATA disks isn't fast enough you can go to SCSI or add a fibre channel card and a XServe RAID array. You should be able to export apps running on the G5 to your TiBook display, but for the cost of a 17" PowerBook and extra RAM you can have a G5 and a 17" LCD or 19/21" CRT. Of course you might not want to have a laptop out of warranty. I have to say that I was pretty impressed with the turn around at Apple Care I dropped my iBook off last monday morning and they sent it out the same day and it was back the following Wednesday before noon with a new logic board. Anticipating a long time in the shop my employer sent me a new iBook and it only arrived Tuesday afternoon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coss Posted September 26, 2003 Author Report Share Posted September 26, 2003 Yes, the dual G5 is very tempting, difficult to use on the plane though. I've done a bit of reading in the discussions on Apple.com and found that my problem is related to having too many devices on the same bus daisy chained. DVCam-120Gb-120Gb-80Gb-20Gb-Laptop So my work around is to capture video to the internal HD with only the DV Cam on the bus. Then copy footage to said drives. Then do editing with only the raided drives connected. Also ordered a firewire hub to see if that makes a difference. Cheers Coss Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adikgede Posted September 27, 2003 Report Share Posted September 27, 2003 I would be interested to see you use that (DVCam-120Gb-120Gb-80Gb-20Gb-Laptop) on a plane. Just be sure to pee before you get everything tied in . It looks like you already have a Random Array of Inexpensive Disks. I think what you might be looking for is a seperate RAID array, which is essentially a drive case with its own RAID controller. Your looking at $2000 and up. As was mentioned before you are not going to see a substantial speed increase but you will be taking some burden off the computers controllers, and you just arent going to be able to fit a SCSI controller and four disks inside your laptop . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
think_too_mut Posted September 28, 2003 Report Share Posted September 28, 2003 >Your looking at $2000 and up. As was mentioned before you are not going to see a substantial speed increase but you will be taking some burden off the computers controllers Not only some, but all of the burden. The external RAID case has it's own CPU, calculates parity and maintains data integrity on it's own. The main CPU will just hand over any i/o requests to the external unit. Assuming, the external unit has it's own cache memory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adikgede Posted September 29, 2003 Report Share Posted September 29, 2003 Hmm well perhaps what I said wasn't very clear. When I said some I meant that the onboard controller still is going to have to deal with a local disk, and I suspect that since many RAID arrays geared towards Mac users have a Fire Wire interface the onboard controller is going to have a hand in I/O but instead of managing many seperate devices it would just see the RAID array as one device so you would eliminate the back and forth between the random of array of disks and Apples software RAID implimentation, which as Coss mentioned would seem to slow things down, really only offering the benifits of fault tolerance and being able to have many devices apear as an integeral volume. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
think_too_mut Posted September 29, 2003 Report Share Posted September 29, 2003 >instead of managing many seperate devices it would just see the RAID array as one device so you would eliminate the back and forth between the random of array of disks I was following the logic of how high-end external storage works. Small devices do emulate the principles with their own CPU, cache and back end paths. Some come with inbuilt RAID, the main computer does not even know that - all internal to the array. The PC/Mac would only see one device. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BritTim Posted September 30, 2003 Report Share Posted September 30, 2003 The PC/Mac would only see one device. True, but the bottom line is that (if this is connected via firewire) it is a lot of money for little or no increase in I/O throughput. Personally, I would not even consider it unless I wanted a robust RAID 5 solution: in that case, a major gain is possible because the mirroring can be invisible to the PC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coss Posted October 1, 2003 Author Report Share Posted October 1, 2003 Well gentlemen I decided to run some tests whilst I await delivery of the 17" powerbook. Revealing too. I used XBench, a freebie. Disk one, 20GB in an external FW case (not Oxford 911 or better) Disk Test 32.71 Sequential 23.63 Uncached Write 32.13 13.39 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Write 31.13 12.75 MB/sec [256K blocks] Uncached Read 14.79 2.34 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Read 26.04 10.52 MB/sec [256K blocks] Random 53.10 Uncached Write 63.48 0.95 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Write 47.55 10.72 MB/sec [256K blocks] Uncached Read 70.10 0.46 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Read 41.19 8.48 MB/sec [256K blocks] Disk two, 30GB in the TiBook 667 MHz Internal Disk Test 40.60 Sequential 50.60 Uncached Write 43.53 18.14 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Write 41.84 17.13 MB/sec [256K blocks] Uncached Read 105.86 16.76 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Read 44.00 17.78 MB/sec [256K blocks] Random 33.90 Uncached Write 19.81 0.30 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Write 40.18 9.06 MB/sec [256K blocks] Uncached Read 47.96 0.32 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Read 45.89 9.44 MB/sec [256K blocks] Disk three, 240GB (2 x 120GB 8MB buffer in an external case with firewire bridges from Caloptic) Disk Test 66.39 Sequential 48.85 Uncached Write 71.59 29.84 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Write 67.42 27.61 MB/sec [256K blocks] Uncached Read 28.96 4.59 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Read 53.88 21.77 MB/sec [256K blocks] Random 103.59 Uncached Write 180.41 2.71 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Write 112.96 25.48 MB/sec [256K blocks] Uncached Read 97.83 0.65 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Read 71.45 14.70 MB/sec [256K blocks] So I'm getting some gain but when the DVCam is capturing I still get dropped frames if the capture disk is not the internal. The PB17" has 1 400 and 1 800 port, on the same bus but maybe there is moderation at the ports and I'll lose my problem, wait and see I guess. Cheers Coss Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BritTim Posted October 2, 2003 Report Share Posted October 2, 2003 Very revealing results. Which operating system were you using? It would be interesting to repeat these tests using other operating systems. Also, For my own edification, in the test with disk 3, are you using just a single firewire port or are two used? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.