What interface will you use on the esata tower? USB2? If so, in what way do you see it being more reliable than firewire i.e what firewire issues have you had?
One advantage is that practically every digital camcorder exclusively has a firewire port for video capture. This means that support for it will have to continue for a long time.
I hope that someday we manage to get one interface that deals with everything. I can see it going wireless too. There are articles about USB3 going the wireless route. This means no ports necessary whatsoever.
This would be great for fast setup and keeping clutter to a minimum. Also for sharing devices like a RAID backup.
Ah, I did some googling for esata enclosures and some of them also had USB2 - I didn't realise esata was the external interface (though apparently that's what the letter 'e' in esata is for). I tried again and got:
As snoopy says, it seems you'd need a PCI SATA card. Still, if the transfer rate is 3Gbps, it's worth it. I've twice neded to copy 30GB over 400 Mbps firewire and it took about an hour each time. Presumably esata would do it in around 10 minutes. The thing is though, what is the limit on how fast you can read/write to say a 7200rpm drive?
Quote:
Originally Posted by snoopy
My impression is that wireless is slower than we can get by cables. Why not GHz Ethernet?
The trouble with ethernet is it doesn't power devices and most devices draw some amount of power. I don't particularly like the idea of powering devices from the computer because that can cause blown motherboards. Someone on a forum I visit regularly blew his entire PC from a simple TV tuner PCI card and had to get a new computer.
What I think would be the best idea is having a separate hub that is powered with one power socket and all your USB devices plug into it. Then the computer can wirelessly access all those devices. This means you could never damage your computer, you can share devices, you don't need batteries and you only need to use one power socket.
The trouble with ethernet is it doesn't power devices and most devices draw some amount of power.
If you notice, there are more twisted pairs of wire than needed in Cat 6 or Cat 5e cables. There are schemes for powering remote devices using the extra wires. One use is inaccessible sensors, where there is no external power source. Trouble is that there is no real standard for power, from what I've heard. Also, it may not work with GHz Ethernet, since I've heard that they double up the twisted pairs for the signal.
There is no reason a new standard could not be written, adding more wires for power and using a different connector. Probably will not happen unless there is some big advantage.
If you notice, there are more twisted pairs of wire than needed in Cat 6 or Cat 5e cables. There are schemes for powering remote devices using the extra wires. One use is inaccessible sensors, where there is no external power source. Trouble is that there is no real standard for power, from what I've heard. Also, it may not work with GHz Ethernet, since I've heard that they double up the twisted pairs for the signal.
There is such a standard, though there were a couple competing setups. The IEEE standard is 802.3af. I used a Linksys PoE transmitter to power an access point made by Engenius Senao so I didn't have to also run separate power wires. Without such a standard, I couldn't mix brands like that. From what I've seen, it is compatible with gigabit because the power is flat DC and data is differential - more or less being AC so it's easy to filter. The max power you get in the end is about 10W.
The problem with using Ethernet as a substitute for local storage devices is that the packet overhead is pretty high. It's improved with jumbo frames but some devices don't like that at all.
As snoopy says, it seems you'd need a PCI SATA card. Still, if the transfer rate is 3Gbps, it's worth it. I've twice neded to copy 30GB over 400 Mbps firewire and it took about an hour each time. Presumably esata would do it in around 10 minutes. The thing is though, what is the limit on how fast you can read/write to say a 7200rpm drive?
eSATA is faster, but I think the drive mechanism will become the bottleneck. The interface conversions won't be an issue anymore because the drive is running on it's native interface rather than something like PCI(e)->Firewire->ATA, you'll more likely get a straight to the chipset connection with SATA, or at worst, PCI(e)->SATA. Barefeats has some speed comparisons, but they might not have used the same drives that you did, and their test pattern might be different than your data transfer.
The nice thing about eSATA is that you can get a port multiplier in the external enclosure so you can run maybe five hard drives from one eSATA port.
I'm disappointed to hear such bad news about FireWire. Can I get your prognosis on the future of this interface? Might it be replaced as a general purpose, high-speed interface, or does it have some unique advantages that can keep it going until it is finally upgraded? I seem to remember it can be used peer-to-peer or something like that, and it can be used at a reasonably long distance, maybe a few hundred feet. Sorry I'm uninformed about such things.
Maybe it could be saved by ripping it out of the hands of a committee and just given to Intel to play with. Intel would already have a customer for it, Apple, and if FireWire were speeded up it may really catch on.
Firewire seems to be suffering from rapid development woes.
Or rather, the lack of same.
Attractions of Firewire have been, speed, accessability, multiple devices on a chain, simple setup, cheap cabling, etc.
Much Firewire use has been for external storage, and Camcorder connections.
The External storage market is going to shrink dramatically over the next year or two. ESATA is taking over for good reasons.
That leaves camcorder hookup as the main use.
Other uses are for film and flatbed scanners, both of which are disappearing from the market as people go to digital camera files.
A few printers use it, but Ethernet is better.
iPods no longer use it.
For non critical uses, USB2 will suffice. for fast networked uses, 1G Ethernet is much more usable.
What interface will you use on the esata tower? USB2? If so, in what way do you see it being more reliable than firewire i.e what firewire issues have you had?
ESATA 2.
That's the only way to go right now, other than much more expensive iSCST, and fiber.
I've had data loss. I've lost entire drives. I'm very conservative, as peoplr here know. I follow all procedures when updating, or upgrading. I even do some things that some here think goes too far.
But, I've lost drives after updating, or upgrading the OS. I know other people who have had the same problems.
This is despite getting the latest Oxford chips and firmware.
It's a known problem.
SATAis also much faster. You can get the full speed of the drives, unlike Firewire 800, which is still much slower.
Quote:
One advantage is that practically every digital camcorder exclusively has a firewire port for video capture. This means that support for it will have to continue for a long time.
It's the one area I'm optimistic about.
But, even that might wane.
Quote:
I hope that someday we manage to get one interface that deals with everything. I can see it going wireless too. There are articles about USB3 going the wireless route. This means no ports necessary whatsoever.
Wireless will always be slower than wired connections.
There are no wireless technologies that approach the speed of 1G Ethernet. In a year or so, 10G Ethernet will be in use.
Wireless is inherently less secure, and is subject to a noisy hash filled environment.[/quote]
Quote:
This would be great for fast setup and keeping clutter to a minimum. Also for sharing devices like a RAID backup.
Ethernet will always be better, though wireless will be good enough for some.
802.11n can _theoretically_ go up to 540Mbps, or a little over half of what gigabit ethernet can theoretically go up to, so wireless is catching up. So while wireless will likely always be slower, it's not by that enough that it's worth the inconvenience of being wired down.
The practical speed of wireless in a quiet electrical environment is about two thirds of the rated speed.
In noisy environments, it could easily be less than half.
As I just mentioned, next year will see the deployment of 10G Ethernet.
The thing is though, what is the limit on how fast you can read/write to say a 7200rpm drive?
Some drives are over 75MB/sec. Raid would be even faster.
[quote]
The trouble with ethernet is it doesn't power devices and most devices draw some amount of power. I don't particularly like the idea of powering devices from the computer because that can cause blown motherboards. Someone on a forum I visit regularly blew his entire PC from a simple TV tuner PCI card and had to get a new computer.[quote]
There is a power over Ethernet standard. Neither USB or Firewire supply much power.
I have to wonder if Apple, upon switching to Intel, was seriously persuaded to knife the Firewire baby, since Intel - AFAIK - is all about the other bus tech - USB? Then again, Intel may not have cared since FireWire has sorta dropped off the radar in the past few years ... regardless, one thing I do understand, is that Apple would have been much further ahead with 1600 FireWire if it got selected as the transfer medium for home Hi-Def ... but the powers that be wanted a total handcuff on the DRM, and FireWire just wasn't designed for such paranoia - thus they came up with their own solution: bloody hell
I don't really know the full power and flexibility of the new Digital Hi-Def bus, but I seriously doubt it's half as powerful as Firewire ... and if that's the case, it's yet another horrible example of the wrong interests being protected at the expense of innovation
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
For everything possible - SATA.
We should have been running 1600 speeds for a good year or more, and should be getting ready for 3200. But, it's been held back for so long, it's become a dead issue.
I'm afraid that the only thing it will be good for is camcorders.
Of course they could, nothing is stopping them. They're more interested in selling you what they think a computer should be and that's an all in one. Instead of building such a machine, they choose to offer a bigger, more expensive iMac.
Comments
What interface will you use on the esata tower? USB2? If so, in what way do you see it being more reliable than firewire i.e what firewire issues have you had?
One advantage is that practically every digital camcorder exclusively has a firewire port for video capture. This means that support for it will have to continue for a long time.
I hope that someday we manage to get one interface that deals with everything. I can see it going wireless too. There are articles about USB3 going the wireless route. This means no ports necessary whatsoever.
This would be great for fast setup and keeping clutter to a minimum. Also for sharing devices like a RAID backup.
USB has a lot of cpu load
USB 3 should work to fix that.
also wireless leads to more batteries
USB has a lot of cpu load
USB 3 should work to fix that.
also wireless leads to more batteries
Not unless you have a separate USB controller chip in every device, I believe?
TWO 16 lane video cards will be accommodated in some chipsets. And Express 2.
DDR3 1333MHz memory!
lots of additional goodness.
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4588
It looks like a great chipset, but Apple doesn't make a machine that could use it.
eSATA is the interface.
Ah, I did some googling for esata enclosures and some of them also had USB2 - I didn't realise esata was the external interface (though apparently that's what the letter 'e' in esata is for). I tried again and got:
http://www.firewiremax.com/external-...rive-case.html
As snoopy says, it seems you'd need a PCI SATA card. Still, if the transfer rate is 3Gbps, it's worth it. I've twice neded to copy 30GB over 400 Mbps firewire and it took about an hour each time. Presumably esata would do it in around 10 minutes. The thing is though, what is the limit on how fast you can read/write to say a 7200rpm drive?
My impression is that wireless is slower than we can get by cables. Why not GHz Ethernet?
The trouble with ethernet is it doesn't power devices and most devices draw some amount of power. I don't particularly like the idea of powering devices from the computer because that can cause blown motherboards. Someone on a forum I visit regularly blew his entire PC from a simple TV tuner PCI card and had to get a new computer.
What I think would be the best idea is having a separate hub that is powered with one power socket and all your USB devices plug into it. Then the computer can wirelessly access all those devices. This means you could never damage your computer, you can share devices, you don't need batteries and you only need to use one power socket.
The trouble with ethernet is it doesn't power devices and most devices draw some amount of power.
If you notice, there are more twisted pairs of wire than needed in Cat 6 or Cat 5e cables. There are schemes for powering remote devices using the extra wires. One use is inaccessible sensors, where there is no external power source. Trouble is that there is no real standard for power, from what I've heard. Also, it may not work with GHz Ethernet, since I've heard that they double up the twisted pairs for the signal.
There is no reason a new standard could not be written, adding more wires for power and using a different connector. Probably will not happen unless there is some big advantage.
If you notice, there are more twisted pairs of wire than needed in Cat 6 or Cat 5e cables. There are schemes for powering remote devices using the extra wires. One use is inaccessible sensors, where there is no external power source. Trouble is that there is no real standard for power, from what I've heard. Also, it may not work with GHz Ethernet, since I've heard that they double up the twisted pairs for the signal.
There is such a standard, though there were a couple competing setups. The IEEE standard is 802.3af. I used a Linksys PoE transmitter to power an access point made by Engenius Senao so I didn't have to also run separate power wires. Without such a standard, I couldn't mix brands like that. From what I've seen, it is compatible with gigabit because the power is flat DC and data is differential - more or less being AC so it's easy to filter. The max power you get in the end is about 10W.
The problem with using Ethernet as a substitute for local storage devices is that the packet overhead is pretty high. It's improved with jumbo frames but some devices don't like that at all.
As snoopy says, it seems you'd need a PCI SATA card. Still, if the transfer rate is 3Gbps, it's worth it. I've twice neded to copy 30GB over 400 Mbps firewire and it took about an hour each time. Presumably esata would do it in around 10 minutes. The thing is though, what is the limit on how fast you can read/write to say a 7200rpm drive?
eSATA is faster, but I think the drive mechanism will become the bottleneck. The interface conversions won't be an issue anymore because the drive is running on it's native interface rather than something like PCI(e)->Firewire->ATA, you'll more likely get a straight to the chipset connection with SATA, or at worst, PCI(e)->SATA. Barefeats has some speed comparisons, but they might not have used the same drives that you did, and their test pattern might be different than your data transfer.
The nice thing about eSATA is that you can get a port multiplier in the external enclosure so you can run maybe five hard drives from one eSATA port.
I'm disappointed to hear such bad news about FireWire. Can I get your prognosis on the future of this interface? Might it be replaced as a general purpose, high-speed interface, or does it have some unique advantages that can keep it going until it is finally upgraded? I seem to remember it can be used peer-to-peer or something like that, and it can be used at a reasonably long distance, maybe a few hundred feet. Sorry I'm uninformed about such things.
Maybe it could be saved by ripping it out of the hands of a committee and just given to Intel to play with. Intel would already have a customer for it, Apple, and if FireWire were speeded up it may really catch on.
Firewire seems to be suffering from rapid development woes.
Or rather, the lack of same.
Attractions of Firewire have been, speed, accessability, multiple devices on a chain, simple setup, cheap cabling, etc.
Much Firewire use has been for external storage, and Camcorder connections.
The External storage market is going to shrink dramatically over the next year or two. ESATA is taking over for good reasons.
That leaves camcorder hookup as the main use.
Other uses are for film and flatbed scanners, both of which are disappearing from the market as people go to digital camera files.
A few printers use it, but Ethernet is better.
iPods no longer use it.
For non critical uses, USB2 will suffice. for fast networked uses, 1G Ethernet is much more usable.
What is left other than camcorder hookup?
Not much.
What interface will you use on the esata tower? USB2? If so, in what way do you see it being more reliable than firewire i.e what firewire issues have you had?
ESATA 2.
That's the only way to go right now, other than much more expensive iSCST, and fiber.
I've had data loss. I've lost entire drives. I'm very conservative, as peoplr here know. I follow all procedures when updating, or upgrading. I even do some things that some here think goes too far.
But, I've lost drives after updating, or upgrading the OS. I know other people who have had the same problems.
This is despite getting the latest Oxford chips and firmware.
It's a known problem.
SATAis also much faster. You can get the full speed of the drives, unlike Firewire 800, which is still much slower.
One advantage is that practically every digital camcorder exclusively has a firewire port for video capture. This means that support for it will have to continue for a long time.
It's the one area I'm optimistic about.
But, even that might wane.
I hope that someday we manage to get one interface that deals with everything. I can see it going wireless too. There are articles about USB3 going the wireless route. This means no ports necessary whatsoever.
Wireless will always be slower than wired connections.
There are no wireless technologies that approach the speed of 1G Ethernet. In a year or so, 10G Ethernet will be in use.
Wireless is inherently less secure, and is subject to a noisy hash filled environment.[/quote]
This would be great for fast setup and keeping clutter to a minimum. Also for sharing devices like a RAID backup.
Ethernet will always be better, though wireless will be good enough for some.
802.11n can _theoretically_ go up to 540Mbps, or a little over half of what gigabit ethernet can theoretically go up to, so wireless is catching up. So while wireless will likely always be slower, it's not by that enough that it's worth the inconvenience of being wired down.
The practical speed of wireless in a quiet electrical environment is about two thirds of the rated speed.
In noisy environments, it could easily be less than half.
As I just mentioned, next year will see the deployment of 10G Ethernet.
The thing is though, what is the limit on how fast you can read/write to say a 7200rpm drive?
Some drives are over 75MB/sec. Raid would be even faster.
[quote]
The trouble with ethernet is it doesn't power devices and most devices draw some amount of power. I don't particularly like the idea of powering devices from the computer because that can cause blown motherboards. Someone on a forum I visit regularly blew his entire PC from a simple TV tuner PCI card and had to get a new computer.[quote]
There is a power over Ethernet standard. Neither USB or Firewire supply much power.
I don't really know the full power and flexibility of the new Digital Hi-Def bus, but I seriously doubt it's half as powerful as Firewire ... and if that's the case, it's yet another horrible example of the wrong interests being protected at the expense of innovation
For everything possible - SATA.
We should have been running 1600 speeds for a good year or more, and should be getting ready for 3200. But, it's been held back for so long, it's become a dead issue.
I'm afraid that the only thing it will be good for is camcorders.
Introducing the all new mac pro G35 and G33...
Not exactly. Bearlake is for consumer desktops. Apple doesn't make a true desktop.
Not exactly. Bearlake is for consumer desktops. Apple doesn't make a true desktop.
But they could...
I'd settle for a Mac... Express, next summer (WWDC 2007):
- Bearlake X motherboard
- Conroe/Kentsfield CPU (dual 2.66, quad 2.40 and quad 2.66)
- DDR3 memory
- One replacable Optical Drive
- 2 HD bays
- 3 PCIe slots
- Smaller than the Mac Pro enclosure
At the same time the Mac Pro would go:
- dual dual 2.66 (Woodcrest)
- dual quad 2.33 (Clovertown)
- dual quad 2.66 (Clovertown)
But they could...
Of course they could, nothing is stopping them. They're more interested in selling you what they think a computer should be and that's an all in one. Instead of building such a machine, they choose to offer a bigger, more expensive iMac.
what type of name is Bearlake? stick to better known places and avoid names that make me think sitting-bull is next.
lol, I certainly didn't think of a place like this:
Bear Lake County, ID
Safari takes its good time rendering the image in Skwidspawn's post. Then it instantly disappears!
I then have to click on the question mark.