I needed a hard drive. Instead of going all out and getting a single 1TB storage, I went for a 500 GB instead.
Firewire is amazing for external hard drives. It’s a little bit more expensive then the single USB 2.0 options, but man… it’s a lot faster.
Plus, you really can’t buy external drives with just FireWire anymore. Usually. FireWire drives just come with USB anyway, so you’ve got some backward capability.
Yes, I just called USB 2.0 “backwards”. You’ll see why in a second.
tan ( ) : Firewire, USB 2.0 Comparison
From the site: FireWire – USB Comparison
FireWire is faster than USB 2.0 in sustained throughput.
Read Test:
- 5000 files (300 MB total) FireWire was 33% faster than USB 2.0
- 160 files (650MB total) FireWire was 70% faster than USB 2.0
Write Test:
- 5000 files (300 MB total) FireWire was 16% faster than USB 2.0
- 160 files (650MB total) FireWire was 48% faster than USB 2.0
USB 2.0: Needs a master and a slave. Peripherals are dumb. FireWire 400: Peer-to-peer. Peripherals are intelligent.
Back to the rest of the post: The Pipes
Here are some random numbers, for your pleasure.
Now, mind you, these are theoretical limits of the pipe. Doesn’t say anything about how fast the devices are running themselves. (Hooray for CS 423 – Operating Systems, this class should be required.)
Right, so how fast does a 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache hard drive read and write? This largely depends on burst and sustained… Seek time is less than 10ms… How far radially is the data stored…
I wasn’t able to figure this out. If someone can give me actual numbers, I’ll be very appreciated. So instead, I decided to run some tests.
Even better. Actual real world tests.
Using Xbench
Internal Hard Drive (SATA)
Results 37.67
System Info
Xbench Version 1.2
System Version 10.4.11 (8S2167)
Physical RAM 2048 MB
Model MacBookPro3,1
Drive Type FUJITSU MHW2160BHPL
Disk Test 37.67
Sequential 59.52
Uncached Write 69.06 42.40 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 64.01 36.22 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 41.65 12.19 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 76.38 38.39 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 27.56
Uncached Write 9.86 1.04 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 62.81 20.11 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 59.29 0.42 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 91.63 17.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]
FireWire 800
Results 51.81
System Info
Xbench Version 1.2
System Version 10.4.11 (8S2167)
Physical RAM 2048 MB
Model MacBookPro3,1
Drive Type ST350063 0AS
Disk Test 51.81
Sequential 83.84
Uncached Write 68.96 42.34 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 99.59 56.35 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 60.13 17.60 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 152.93 76.86 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 37.49
Uncached Write 12.78 1.35 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 94.76 30.34 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 91.12 0.65 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 144.77 26.86 MB/sec [256K blocks]
What the heck is going on? How the heck is my external outperforming my desktop in every single possible way?
EDIT: I had forgot to think about the RPMs. Since laptops are design for lower power consumption, normally they come with 5400 RPM drives instead of 7200 RPM, which is the one that’s in the external. Now these numbers make sense.
For fun, I performed the test for FireWire 400 and USB 2.0.
FireWire 400
Results 44.61
System Info
Xbench Version 1.2
System Version 10.4.11 (8S2167)
Physical RAM 2048 MB
Model MacBookPro3,1
Drive Type ST350063 0AS
Disk Test 44.61
Sequential 59.75
Uncached Write 53.08 32.59 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 64.79 36.66 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 50.22 14.70 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 78.36 39.38 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 35.59
Uncached Write 12.97 1.37 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 65.63 21.01 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 91.10 0.65 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 109.82 20.38 MB/sec [256K blocks]
USB 2.0
Results 16.61
System Info
Xbench Version 1.2
System Version 10.4.11 (8S2167)
Physical RAM 2048 MB
Model MacBookPro3,1
Drive Type ST350063 0AS
Disk Test 16.61
Sequential 12.73
Uncached Write 30.12 18.49 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 31.23 17.67 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 4.45 1.30 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 41.40 20.81 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 23.89
Uncached Write 8.47 0.90 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 44.95 14.39 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 69.71 0.49 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 78.19 14.51 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Here’s a simple table output of this data.
In a real world test, an External FireWire 800 connection somehow managed to beat my Internal SATA drive. Again, if someone could possibly explain this data, let me know.
EDIT: Once again, I realized the error I made: Here, I thought for some reason that the internal drive had similar specs as the external. I also have a feeling that the buffer size is going to be different also due to the size difference (8 MB for internal, 16 MB for external).
Conclusion
In the end, I’m glad I made the switch to FireWire. Now all my Time Machine backups are faster, and requires less strain on the Core 2 Duo processors.
I really hope, though, that the next external data source I purchase will be a part of the Cloud… you know, the ones where I don’t have to deal with the physical media at all. No disks, no CDs, no DVDs, not even Hard Drives: Just some made up blocks of data storage somewhere.
