bench test of Performa 6214CD internal IDE hard disk

[NJRoadfan]

Sounds like the adapter is malfunctioning. I had the same problems with mine.

 

[bigmessowires]

But 8.1 doesn't have that type of file permissions? Only for network shares. The user can access all files, unless the disk or folder is locked.

Yeah, I don't get it either. 8.1 does have the Users and Groups control panel though. I assume the concepts of file ownership are embedded in HFS+ even if 8.1 doesn't make use of them. Maybe 8.1 checks for ownership at some low level, even if it lacks an interface to view or change ownership?

This is in my 1400, but you can imagine that space is at a premium. This adapter fits just perfectly, and a little foam tape helps secure it.

Your adapter looks much smaller than mine - it's barely any larger than the SD card, and doesn't have a power connector. Mine is slightly smaller than a regular 2.5 inch drive, but with connectors coming out the top instead of the rear.

In your post you mentioned using Disk Utility to image the old disk and transfer it to the SD card. I tried doing that, but wasn't successful. First I made a disk image of the HFS+ partition from the SD card (not of the whole SD card). Later after I'd reformatted the SD card, I tried to use Disk Utility's "restore" to copy everything back from the image file to the SD card partition. It kept complaining "Source volume is read-write and cannot be unmounted, so it can't be block copied." I tried locking the disk image, and unmounting both the disk image and the destination partition volume. I Googled for answers but didn't find much except for suggestions to use a different disk imaging program. That's why I resorted to simply drag-and-drop copying everything between the image and the SD card, which seems to have caused this other problem related to permissions.

 

[LaPorta]

Hm, I didn't actually mention imaging it. I meant making sure that the SD card was formatted using Apple Partition Map, obviously HFS+ if that is what you are going to use. Start with a completely blank SD card. Try using your Performa to then start from the 8.1 CD and do a clean install of 8.1 from the CD. That's the best I can come up with: I, too, have had funky issues in the past, and I was almost always able to correct them by just starting fresh and not actually copying anything, but installing from scratch.

 

[bigmessowires]

How did you actually copy the files from the old drive to the SD card? Just mount them both, and drag everything over?

 

[LaPorta]

I suppose I didn't realize that you wanted to actually keep the contents of the original drive . Usually if I am doing something like that, theres a few ways I can go about it. I bought one of those nifty NewerTech Swiss-Army-Knife type things where you can hook a bare SATA, ATA 3.5", and ATA 2.5" drive to a computer via USB 3. This way, any time I pop one of those out, I can mount it on, say, an older Mac Mini or whatever and make a full disk image, then mount that on the target computer. Or, as you say, mount both and drag the files right over (the NewerTech thing with old drive mounted, and then the SD card mounted in an SD card reader).

However, I almost always do a legit, CD-installer System install on these SD cards. All of these issues with hard disk drivers and such I have had as well, and I have avoided them by just treating it as a real HD, using Drive Setup (or patched HD SC setup for SCSI2SD-types) to format it while starting from a legitimate System CD. Then, I do a real System install from the CD instead of dragging some random System folder onto the disk. That has always given me the least issue and trouble.

The disk reader is actually the first photo of the link I had a few posts back about the 1400 drive. They are pretty cheap; I'd suggest one if you think you would use it enough.

 

[bigmessowires]

Our next contestant in the 6300 disk I/O competition: an IDE-to-SATA adapter paired with a 750 GB SSD. Apple Disk Setup recognized it as a 127.9 GB disk. I chose to partition it as a 2 GB volume, leaving the rest empty. Updated benchmarks:

Conner 1.2 GB 3600 rpm IDE: sustained read: 1789 KB/sec, sustained write: 2179 KB/sec, average access time 24.1 ms
IDE-to-SD with class 10 card: sustained read: 1720 KB/sec, sustained write: 1528 KB/sec, average access time 1.2 ms
IDE-to-SATA with 750 GB SSD: sustained read: 2408 KB/sec, sustained write: 2822 KB/sec, average access time 1.1 ms

This looks better than either of the earlier options. Since both the SSD and the SD card should theoretically be capable of much better speeds than this, I think this is really benchmarking the IDE-to-whatever adapters more than the drives themselves. Here's the full report:



One thing to notice is the shape of the curve compared to the original hard disk. It climbs steeply and is near its maximum for transfers of about 5-10 KB or more. The IDE-to-SD curve looked similar, sorry I forgot to include it. But the original hard disk curve (first post of this thread) climbs slowly, and doesn't begin to approach its maximum until the transfer size is 20 KB or more. That may actually be more important than whatever numbers are reported for "sustained" transfer rates.

OS8.1 boot time is 44 seconds, basically the same as with the IDE-to-SD adapter.

Later I'll test these same drive options again in the G4 Quicksilver, where the IDE controller isn't such an obvious bottleneck.

 

[LaPorta]

This is really interesting, I am enjoying seeing all of these comparisons.

 

[bigmessowires]

The disk reader is actually the first photo of the link I had a few posts back about the 1400 drive. They are pretty cheap; I'd suggest one if you think you would use it enough.

Thanks, I ordered one of the type that you have. I think the smaller size may solve the practical placement issues I have in the 6300.

I suppose I could try that on say... an Amiga 4000. I don't have hope for this thing though. I suspect there is a different revision chip or ROM between the two I have. This thing failed miserably at working in a bog standard PC, even after blasting out partition tables and formatting.

I certainly wouldn't be surprised by bugs or poor quality control in the adapter. But I'm also suspicious that the adapter's microcontroller actually tries to read the partition table on the SD card and changes its behavior based on that. I'm not sure why - I don't think that should be necessary. It should be able to query the SD card's capacity by using Secure Digital commands, without ever reading any data sectors from the card. But how else to explain the behavior that I saw? With the screwed-up driver partition (and maybe other partitions?) the adapter consistently reported itself as 32 MB in two different Mac disk utility programs. But as soon as I wiped the SD card using a different computer and replaced it in the adapter, the adapter started correctly reporting the 16 GB size again. I know you've probably moved on from this a long time ago, but if you still care, I would try wiping your SD card (by itself, not with the adapter) in a modern computer and then dropping it back into the IDE-SD adapter.

 

[Phipli]

Thanks, I ordered one of the type that you have. I think the smaller size may solve the practical placement issues I have in the 6300.

Note these are laptop connector size - 2.5" disks, not 3.5". You'll need an adapter. I do find those more reliable though.

 

[bigmessowires]

Oh poop, I missed that detail. With another adapter and separate power connection it will nullify the space savings that I was hoping for.

 

[Phipli]

Oh poop, I missed that detail. With another adapter and separate power connection it will nullify the space savings that I was hoping for.

It's still worth doing. They're the best of the IDE adapters. I've been running a Pismo with one for about 4 years absolutely reliably. It's actually significantly faster than the stock drive was.

 

[MacJunky]

I think this is really benchmarking the IDE-to-whatever adapters more than the drives themselves.

Yeah, I have been testing some things in my 6500. For all the excitement people have about SD and SATA adapters in old Macs, I still would rather use CF cards if I can get my hands on them.

 

[LaPorta]

Oh poop, I missed that detail. With another adapter and separate power connection it will nullify the space savings that I was hoping for.

I’m sorry! I thought I’d said so…my fault.

 

[bigmessowires]

Yeah, I have been testing some things in my 6500. For all the excitement people have about SD and SATA adapters in old Macs, I still would rather use CF cards if I can get my hands on them.

Are those numbers from Norton? Any idea what's different between the "Disk" and "Publishing Disk" test? The CF card's numbers drop by almost half in that second test (relative to the G3/300 reference system), but still beat everything else by a big margin.

Am I right that CF cards are natively IDE/ATA? That would give them an advantage over any SATA or SD card solution where some type of protocol translation is required.

 

[Phipli]

Any idea what's different between the "Disk" and "Publishing Disk" test?

That's MacBench. Norton does read / write for a set of sequence lengths.

 

[NJRoadfan]

I certainly wouldn't be surprised by bugs or poor quality control in the adapter. But I'm also suspicious that the adapter's microcontroller actually tries to read the partition table on the SD card and changes its behavior based on that. I'm not sure why - I don't think that should be necessary. It should be able to query the SD card's capacity by using Secure Digital commands, without ever reading any data sectors from the card. But how else to explain the behavior that I saw? With the screwed-up driver partition (and maybe other partitions?) the adapter consistently reported itself as 32 MB in two different Mac disk utility programs. But as soon as I wiped the SD card using a different computer and replaced it in the adapter, the adapter started correctly reporting the 16 GB size again. I know you've probably moved on from this a long time ago, but if you still care, I would try wiping your SD card (by itself, not with the adapter) in a modern computer and then dropping it back into the IDE-SD adapter.

Tried that. Blasted the drive with a USB reader. No dice. Also tried the official SD card formatting tool. Still did the "can't write to device" and randomly showing as 32MB. Got the new adapter, popped the card in and it worked fine.

 

[LaPorta]

Am I right that CF cards are natively IDE/ATA? That would give them an advantage over any SATA or SD card solution where some type of protocol translation is required.

You’d think. My experience with ATA to CF in my PT Pro with ATA/133 PCI card was very subpar. Lots of random slowdowns for disk access. Took two minutes to shut down. Never was able to figure it out. Swapping that for the IDE to SD stopped all of that. Of course your experience may be different.

 

[NJRoadfan]

CF cards are basically IDE, that is why the adapters are cheap. The performance (particularly writing) varies greatly with the card you buy. Many of them are rated using a speed system based on the 150kB/s read speed of CD-ROMs. So a 133x card is technically capable of 19,950kB/s.... usually for reads. Writing to the card is usually very very slow based on my testing (even on a 486 with a standard ISA IDE controller). Today a better solution would be to just buy a real 2.5" SATA SSD and use an adapter as they have gotten very cheap. They also have wear leveling and better suited for use as a system drive.

 

[Phipli]

Regarding CF cards, modern ones often aren't compatible with IDE adapters. I have some old 2GB and smaller ones I use for old computers.

I tend to find that a new one from Amazon just doesn't work.

Not sure why exactly, guess they dropped some compatibility modes.

 

[MacJunky]

I tend to find that a new one from Amazon just doesn't work.

At this point most of my cards are Verbatim and were from Amazon. The painful part these days is the price for anything more than 16GB and that is unfortunate.
Perhaps someday I will retest everything with a different program for a bit more detailed info.
If I recall I was having some weird issues with the JM20330 based SATA adapters, but I forget the details. The SD adapters I have are FC1307A, if that matters to anyone. I am just not thrilled with the performance or general experience of any of these other devices but have not actually gone to extremes with testing so I should hold my tongue.


I am currently using a SD to CF adapter and class 10 SD card for my Performa 631CD. It requires a very specific driver to be bootable and I can't remember if I have tested the speed or not. It works, not sure if I would ever consider buying more though. The driver is APS PowerTools 6.4.3, nothing else I tried seemed to work.