Followup on my G5's apparent FW problem???

[GeneL]

Continuing from my previous post "G5 & FW 800 PCI card-Woohoo! Thanks Larry and OWC!"

I have ended up wondering if I have an intrinsic firewire problem on my G5?

Dual 2.0/4.5GB (8 ram slots)/OWC PCI FW 800/400/USB 2.0/ OS 10.4.5 plus an OWC Mercury AL FW 800/400/USB 2.0 enclosure housing a Maxtor 300GB drive.

I just ran a test using Intego's Personal Backup to transfer a 7GB DV file.

Here's the log:

From Christmas 2004@Don & Julie's. iMovieProject To Maxtor 2030020 External

Starting up execution:
2006-03-11 12:38:55 -0800

End of execution :
2006-03-11 12:42:38 -0800

Total files:82
Files to copy:82
Files to copy (Left): 0
Files to copy (Right):82
Errors during preflight: 0
Size to copy:7.17 GB (7698612259 B )
Size (left):0 B (0 B )
Size (right):7.17 GB (7698612259 B )
Copied size:7.17 GB (7698613833 B )
Copied files:82
Errors during copy: 0

Total time:<3 min

Average Speed:32.91 MB/s

The supposed possible transfer speed based on OWC's specs:

"Features & Benefits:
Up to 800Mbps! - The OWC Mercury FireWire 800 PCI Adapter Card has been tested at exceeding 63MB/Sec when using OWC Mercury Elite Pro FireWire 800 hard drives. That's incredible speed!"

The indicated speed of transfer seems to be very far under the possible FW 800 transfer speed according to the spec and the input I had from Carthaigh, who did some checking on his Powerbook.

Since I have been getting the shaft from CompUSA and Apple on my Applecare (see previous topic), I'm wondering if there really is a new or ongoing problem with my G5's firewire performance.

I'd appreciate any helpful input, especially if it would lead to my being able to get Apple to pony up a replacement.

Thanks for your thoughts,

GeneL

[jdc]

G5s and FW 800 just bites, i will switch to SATA soon -- i really should have done it in the first place...

http://www.barefeats.com/hard51.html

2. Blame it on the G5 Power Mac, which is FireWire 800 "Challenged"
We discovered something back in 2003 when the first G5 Power Mac was introduced. When running FireWire 800 RAID sets, the sustained write speed of the G5 Power Mac was much slower than the G4 Power Mac (and PowerBook). In one dramatic test, we had installed three FireWire 800 PCI cards in both the G5 Power Mac and G4 Power Mac. That, along with the built-in FireWire 800 port, gave us four data channels -- one for each of the four drives. We striped the four drives (RAID 0) on each machine. When we ran the large sustained write test, the G4 Power Mac recorded TWICE the speed of the G5 Power Mac (180MB/s versus 90MB/s).

Let me say that again. The G4 Power Mac was doing sustained WRITES at TWICE the speed of the G5 Power Mac.

In the graph below, we used our more recent hardware to show the advantage of the G4 Power Mac over the G5 Power Mac when running FireWire 800 storage units. Notice we include results showing how adding a second data channel boosts the speed of the FireWire 800 storage unit.

CONCLUSIONS AND COMMENTS
After two years, the G5's FireWire 800 write speed deficiency is still there. That, along with seeming ambivalence by Apple to fully promoting the advance of FireWire technology, has had the effect of elevating Serial ATA over FireWire as the external storage technology of choice -- especially since hot-swap and bootability has been added to SATA host adapters.

[GeneL]

jdc, I was aware of the "Barefeats" info but I also have seen info saying that installing a PCI firewire 800/400 card card is supposed to correct the problem.

I thought it had because the transfer speed was a lot faster using the port on the PCI card, BUT Carthaigh pointed out to me in my previous topic, that the speed should be considerably higher.

I checked the information on another but similar OWC FW PCI card and saw that, in fact, the specs showed that a much higher transfer speed was claimed.

I'm at a loss to know if the speed shown in the above log is accurate and if it is where to go from here.

[jdc]

what i get from barefeats is that even the G5 with a FW 800 card is still slower than G4s with the card and even an older powerbooks built in FW 800

is there more info at your "tinyurl" link? im always hesitant to click on a "tinyurl" link cause i dont know where it may take me...

[GeneL]

It's just a link to my previous topic about this issue.

[LyleH]

jdc stated: is there more info at your "tinyurl" link? im always hesitant to click on a "tinyurl" link cause i dont know where it may take me...

In Safari if you "hover" over the link with your mouse pointer it changes into a hand and you can read the link in the grey bottom strip of the Safari window.

LyleH

[GeneL]

Yes Lyle, you can read the link as you said, but as far as I can see, it just gives the same info as the tiny url link, not the original link.

That's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

[jdc]

ok i went back and read the other thread

i have a dual 2.0 and the same OWC AL FW 800 case and 300 gig Seagate drive -- just need a tool to test the speed with

lokks like MBBench might take some time...

[GeneL]

Tried it. It didn't do anything. It ran but gave no results???

[jdc]

if you find some freeware that will benchmark, i will be happy to run it on mine