Fast Storage.

[DannyBres]

I am after faster storage for my apps and photos etc as the 7200rpm hdd in my iMac seems to be the bottle neck of the performance.

What is the faster possible storage for (<£1000) I can get?

Would it be a Drobo-FS with 5x2TB 7200rpm drives connected using gigabit ethernet to my AirportExtreme connected via gigabit ethernet to my iMac?

 

[Hellhammer]

Your internal drive is as fast as it can get. It's connected via SATA 3Gb/s which provides up to 285MB/s in real world, more than any singe mechanical HD can achieve. Depends on what capacity HD you have but your internal HD should provide speed of ~120MB/s or so.

FW800 can provide about 80MB/s in real world.
Gigabit Ethernet can in theory provide 125MB/s but due to 8/10b encoding, its real world maximum is 100MB/s.

Both interfaces available are slower than your internal HD. If you have a 27" 2010 iMac, you could do eSATA mod to get 3Gb/s performance.

 

[alust2013]

If you're really daring, you could put a SSD in there, which would boost speeds pretty nicely.

 

[DannyBres]

So a drobo connected over eSata would be the faster possible solution? As the RAID of machanical drives would be faster at reading data than a single SSD drive?

 

[Paulywauly]

Drobos aren't known for their speed, look into that before spending any money on one.

If you don't wanna mod your machine look into a NAS RAID box with a gigabit Ethernet port

 

[philipma1957]

speed being king not safety see below

The fastest non hack setup I was able do was this:



http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEQX2KIT0GB/ 300 usd


with four of these drives in raid0 with fw800 connection


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...5&cm_re=samsung_1tb_f3-_-22-152-185-_-Product 4 cost 260 usd

here is a series of tests done with my wife's 27 inch 2009 imac C2D 3.06



http://db.xbench.com/search.xhtml?text=zzzzz5


note the best score



http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc2=428527


this was the owc qx2 with 4 1tb samsung drives. look at the read write 4k in the scores the samsung 1tb f3 is very good at this in the 4 drive raid0. This really will speed the computer up a lot.


REMEMBER RAID0 CAN FAIL SO WHILE FAST NOT SO SAFE. If purchased in USA it is under 600 usd.

ONE more thing the qx2 really works best with the samsungs listed. the samsungs get the very good 4k read / write scores in raid0 many other hdds don't hitachi 2tb and western digital 1.5tb caviar black don't. For real world you will get faster IOPS. So this counts if you are using the unit as a boot drive. It runs closer to ssd performance with the samsungs then other mechanical hdds.

 

[vincenz]

I think what you're looking for is an SSD. Not sure if you want to open the iMac up though.

 

[Hellhammer]

So a drobo connected over eSata would be the faster possible solution?

Doesn't have to be Drobo but yes, external storage via eSATA is the fastest you can get with the current iMac.

As the RAID of machanical drives would be faster at reading data than a single SSD drive?

Depends on the SSD but the fastest ones can max out SATA 3Gb/s so in sustained speeds they would be pretty similar. SSD would be a lot faster in random speeds though.

 

[philipma1957]

Drobos aren't known for their speed, look into that before spending any money on one.

If you don't wanna mod your machine look into a NAS RAID box with a gigabit Ethernet port

A lot to be said for a good fast NAS RAID. You can put it in a different part of the home if you use hard wire router it will pull fast speeds around 100 to 110MB/s . You can get big size easy 20 TB . I like synology a lot.

Down sides are:
They cost a lot for a big fast one, hard to setup and they won't boot that well (maybe maybe not for booting)



here are 3 synology nas low end;


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108042&Tpk=synology 110


I own this with a 2tb samsung hdd. It is the clearinghouse for my 3 computers. I shuffle long recordings from computer to computer with it.




mid size:


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108059&Tpk=synology ds411+

hi end :



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108072&Tpk=synology ds1511+