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Modding A Mac Mini For eSATA Support
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Is SATA that much faster than firewire to make it worth hacking an external SATA interface on the mini?
Rightfullyso.com [rightfullyso.com]
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Yes. You won't see a difference with a single drive; in that configuration the single drive's spindle speed and transfer rate is the bottleneck, and either SATA or FW800 can handle it, although a fast drive will push the boundaries of FW400.
But with multi-drive RAID enclosures, SATA has a clear advantage. A striped RAID array can achieve transfer rates of 200MB/s or more over SATA - over twice what FW800 can handle.
--
vi vi vi - The editor of the beast.
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by
Anonymous Coward
on Sunday February 11, @12:22PM (#116498)
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Yes, there is a big difference between this mod and a Firewire400 enclosure.
It's not the bandwidth of FW400 so much as the IDE/FireWire bridge chipsets that are in most enclosures. Some are so bad that they can limit overall throughput severely.
With this mod, it full speed SATA all the way.
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Yes, it is the bandwidth. The latest batch of desktop drives (those with perpendicular recording technology) can exceed 70 mbyte/s quite easily. That's 560 mbit/s, when Firewire 400 is capable of 393 mbit/s as a theoretical maximum.
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Well, I would personally regard the lack of eSATA as a reason to not get a mini, not a reason to mod a mini, but either way it's significantly faster than Firewire.
Firewire 400 isn't even close to enough for current desktop-class drives, and more importantly runs into its own limitations at about the same point that the internal laptop-class drive in a mini does. USB obviously isn't the answer either. So, if you want desktop-class hard drive performance on a mini, the only way to get it is with mods.
This is going to be more of an issue in the future, since even Firewire 800 is getting pretty close to its limitations. Its theoretical transfer rate is 786 mbit/s, and a lot of that is lost to overhead such that current drives are already starting to run into its limits for faster portions of the drive.
Drive throughput goes up with the density (since the RPMs typically don't change), as drive density goes up Firewire 800 will become a bottleneck as well. Conversely, eSATA at 3000 mbit/s is fast enough to handle several of the fastest drives.
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While this is a neat mod, you would have to ask why would you bother on a mac mini. FW400 with have more than enough bandwidth for nearly all applications. Most drives will not be able to max out FW400. I have a intel mac mini as a media server in my home with 3 large drives on the FW400 connection and it works great. If you had a serious need for more performance surley something a bit more up market like a mac pro would be better. I have always found the discussion of bandwidth to hardrives a bit like putting mag wheels on a Toyota Corolla. Yes it reduces unsprung weight but its a Corolla... more likely it improves the "impression ratio". Same discussion can be had over Fw400,sata,USB2.0 for external drives.
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by
Anonymous Coward
on Sunday February 11, @02:30PM (#116503)
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> Most drives will not be able to max out FW400.
any 3.5" drive you buy today will easily be able to max out FW400
> If you had a serious need for more performance surley something a bit more up market like a mac pro would be better
thats a rather insane amount to spend just cause you want better performance than a mini
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FW400 with have more than enough bandwidth for nearly all applications.
No argument there.
Most drives will not be able to max out FW400.
Not true! I've seen many benchmarks of newer drives achieving 50-60Mb/s. FW400 can't handle that.
I have a intel mac mini as a media server in my home with 3 large drives on the FW400 connection and it works great.
Okay, but that has nothing at all to do with whether FW400 can outperform SATA or not. It's simply that you're serving a relatively low bitrate stream that's well within the capacity of either interface. A compressed audio stream typically ranges from 128 to 256Kb/s, and standard-def compressed video from 3 to 4Mb/s. I'm not sure what the bitrates for HD are; I'm too poor to buy a HD TV yet, so I haven't researched it. :-(
... a bit like putting mag wheels on a Toyota Corolla. Yes it reduces unsprung weight but its a Corolla.
Reduced weight also means better mileage. (It's not always about getting away from the light a tenth of a second faster, you know...)
--
vi vi vi - The editor of the beast.
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by
Anonymous Coward
on Sunday February 11, @02:32PM (#116504)
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I'm sorry to say this, but this is not the first time the Mini has been hacked for eSATA.
Somebody else did this back in November 2006 and probably a few others before:
http://katastrophos.net/andre/blog/2006/11/02/the- mac-mini-external-sata-hack/
Same approach, more details.
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by
Anonymous Coward
on Sunday February 11, @03:34PM (#116505)
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Yeah, but unlike the link you provided this hack takes a slightly different approach - mainly by NOT cutting a gaping chunk out of the mini(great for warranty), and provides a standard eSATA port which allows you to connect to off the shelf eSATA enclosures.
Here's another approach that is even earlier and uglier:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=21479 6
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Is anyone else seeing flashbacks from that last picture? The first HD I ever saw for a Mac was along the same lines; its case was the same size as the original Mac, and designed for the Mac to sit on top of it. I think it was a whopping 10MB, or something like that...
Yeah, I'm old. Get off my yard! :-)
--
vi vi vi - The editor of the beast.
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by
Anonymous Coward
on Monday February 12, @07:55AM (#116514)
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The first HD I ever saw for a Mac was along the same lines; its case was the same size as the original Mac, and designed for the Mac to sit on top of it. I think it was a whopping 10MB, or something like that...
They were known as ZFP drives (for Zero FootPrint). The enclosure was big enough that they were often 5.25". I have a few in my basement if you want them...
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That was the MacBottom. I had one. Believe it or not, it connected to the SERIAL PORT in an original Mac. Even the 128K Mac. But the 512 really smoked with the 10MB drive.
Sheesh...the pictures from my digital camera are bigger than 10 MB now.
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