Resolume Forum

Messhead- Are you happy with this harddrive?

as far as i experimented the theoretical throughput of the used interface is not the limiting factor when using external drives. the maximum amount of bandwith used when playing three mjpeg clips stays well under the max. throughput of an usb 2.0 interface.
as far as i experienced, the seek time, especialy when loading additional footage is a major factor. faster spinning drives, at least 7200rpm desktop harddrives or solid state devices seem to be able to remove stutters when loading decks or changing clips, as they tend to have much faster seek times than 2,5" notebook drives. regular defragmention of the footage drive also seems to give some performance gain. Whatever. The bus interface is imho not the bottleneck and should be considered least.

I just did some tests to see the differences between FW800, FW400 and USB2 on our new LaCie d2 Quadra External Hard Drive:
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10869

I did this test on a MacBook Pro and the drive is formatted with Mac OS Extended (Journaled) so you should not compare the results directly with an NTFS formatted drive on Windows but I'm sure the differences in speed between the interfaces will remain more or less the same.

FW800 Interface
xBench 1.3 Disk Test Score: 54.79
Sequential
Uncached Write 59.88 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 53.96 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 16.33 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 79.74 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random
Uncached Write 1.41 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 36.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 0.74 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 25.40 MB/sec [256K blocks]

FW400 Interface
xBench 1.3 Disk Test Score: 47.33
Sequential
Uncached Write 39.75 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 35.66 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 13.04 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 36.10 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random
Uncached Write 1.50 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 28.01 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 0.74 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 19.46 MB/sec [256K blocks]

USB2.0 Interface
xBench 1.3 Disk Test Score: 28.12
Sequential
Uncached Write 15.97 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 14.61 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 5.07 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 15.90 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random
Uncached Write 1.55 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 13.87 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 0.67 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 11.63 MB/sec [256K blocks]

As you can see the USB2.0 is MUCH SLOWER than FW400. I actually expected USB2.0 to be faster, but it's not. As expected, FW800 is by far the fastest. So if you are buying a new external drive and your computer has FW800 it's well worth it to pay a bit more for a drive with a FW800 interface.

I bought a eSATA ExpressCard for (28 euro) and did some speed tests. As expected, it's even faster than FW800. So forget USB or Firewire, eSATA is the way to go!

eSATA Interface
xBench 1.3 Disk Test Score: 62.60
Sequential
Uncached Write 98.16 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 85.15 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 16.49 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 95.70 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random
Uncached Write 1.48 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 77.11 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 0.73 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 29.04 MB/sec [256K blocks]

I told you that eSata was the fastest, I'm using it about 6 months and it's great!

in terms of getting an Esata PCMCIA card for my my laptop (not express card) with an external Esata hardrive.will it realy speed things up that much? i was talkin to somebody and they said i would probably only see a 20% increase in speed of finding clips and not even all the time.

my machine is :
toshiba m70
win xp home
1.73ghz centrino
2gb ram
128 graphics dedicated

Originally posted by coolhandloop
in terms of getting an Esata PCMCIA card for my my laptop (not express card) with an external Esata hardrive.will it realy speed things up that much? i was talkin to somebody and they said i would probably only see a 20% increase in speed of finding clips and not even all the time.

my machine is :
toshiba m70
win xp home
1.73ghz centrino
2gb ram
128 graphics dedicated

Esata trough pcmia is limited to 1,5 Gb/s, which is still fastest.

nice one im gona get that pcmcia adapter.
thanks

miau - I never doubted you.
bart - thank you very much for the test results!

As far as i see, there is no way to connect either Firewire or eSATA to the new Macbook 13".
As i (beginner) might purchase one of these in the next days, i am asking myself if the lack of these connections is a reason to buy some other laptop.
I know its difficult, but can you somehow estimate how bad it would be for a rookie to use USB 2.0 harddrives instead of faster Firewire Drives? Due to my lack of experience, i am really greatful for any help.

edit: or something else: can i install such an "Esata PCMCIA card" on a new macbook? for this would solve my problems with ease.