Here are some initial disk benchmarks in the G4 Quicksilver. There are still several more disks and interfaces to be tested though, plus I hope to get the SCSI interface benchmarked too.
Here's the original hard disk, Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 60GB ST360021A IDE 7200rpm:
Here's an
IDE-to-SD adapter, paired with a class 10 SD card, and connected to the primary IDE channel:
Here's an
IDE-to-SATA adapter paired with a 750GB Crucial SSD, and connected to the primary IDE channel:
My analysis: The hard disk and the SD card are roughly equal for sequential reads. The SD card is substantially better for small random reads, but the SD write performance ranges from bad to terrible, whether for sequential or random writes. Given a choice between these two options, I'm not sure which one I would pick. Do you prioritize small random reads over write performance?
But it doesn't matter because the IDE-to-SATA SSD completely outperforms the first two drives in every category. It's not even close. For large reads where the other drives are at their best, the IDE-to-SATA SSD is still more than twice as fast. And for smaller transfer sizes and random reads/writes it can be 10x faster or more. Wow!
Stay tuned for more exciting disk benchmarks: more IDE drives, PCI SATA card, SCSI drives, USB drives...