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Written by Chris Tangora
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Wednesday, 16 August 2006 |
A battle between titans
With a growing iPhoto and iTunes library and Leopard's Time Machine just around the corner, I needed to seriously reconsider my storage situation. I started looking at my hard drives. Hard drives are becoming bigger and bigger, and the prices are coming lower and lower. The logical step is to upgrade. Unfortunately, the latest and greatest isn't going to work for the older Macs. If you tried upgrading your pre-2002 Power Mac, you would find that you run into a problem with the new hard drives, specifically that they don't register the full size of the hard drive once it goes over 128 GB.
The problem is in the pre-2002 Mac IDE controller. You'll find this IDE controller problem in the B&W G3, Beige G3, Yikes, Sawtooth/AGP, Digital Audio, 2001 Quicksilver G4, G4 Cube, tray and slot loading iMacs and of course any older models. Here are a few suggestions for dealing with your IDE controller: You can live with it, use a software hack to get around it, buy a new computer, get a PCI IDE controller card or bust out the soldering iron and try to find a way to make it work. I had plenty of space in the PCI slots and I wanted to have the option to keep my ATA for backing up crucial data so the PCI IDE controller was the logical choice.
Remember, any SATA upgrade card will allow you to upgrade your Mac to
recognize larger disk drives, but "vintage" (and I say that with
admiration) Macs will be limited by more than an IDE controller. The
SATA cards are an improvement over standard ATA, and your main goal
here should be to gain more useable space, with the increase in speed
being an added bonus. I had the chance to review two SATA PCI cards, the SIIG Serial ATA 4-Channel PCI-M and the OWC Serial ATA 2-Channel PCI/PCI-X Controller.
Overall the SIIG card seemed to have a more stable performance curve, however, it was a lower curve than the OWC card. The OWC card smoked the SIIG card on a number of test, and only fell behind in a few. The downside to the OWC card was the variance in the results. I ran two series of test and took the best numbers from each test.
Using the same 3.5" recently defragged 7200 150 GB drive, I tested each with Intech's Quick Bench. I cleared the cache and swap files before each test with Applejack. The biggest difference was in the total speed available to the cards. Both cards showed their maximum performance on the 5 MB read transfer. The OWC card was able to get over 94 MB/sec, while the SIIG card was able to get over 82 MB/sec. OWC again led the way in the 2 - 10 MB write transfers, outpaceing the SIIG card by an average of 128%. The SIIG card did hold its own and was noticeably more consistent with it's results. One interesting detail was the read transfer speeds. The OWC card was faster on the 2 - 5 MB transfer reads, while the SIIG card was faster on the 6 - 10 MB transfer reads. Overall they were closely matched, with the OWC card edging out in front with a 107% total test rating against the SIIG 96%. Statistically, the OWC won 44 of the test, SIIG took 26 and they tied on 9.
OWC leads on the performance side, but what about function? Both cards installed with absolutely no hassle. The OWC is built with a total of four SATA channels, but only two are useable at any time. There are two channels on the inside and two on the outside plate. They are controlled by a simple switch next to each of the internal ports so that you may have any combination of two active ports on at any given time (power down to switch connections). On the other hand, the SIIG has a total of four ports with all four ports being accessible (internally only). The SIIG also has a slightly smaller circuit board than the OWC card, but they both fit into the same size PCI slot. If you are planning on adding more storage, be aware that the SATA connections require a dedicated channel for each drive, no daisy chaining.
The price, availability and warranty of the two cards is vital to the comparison. A quick search showed the SIIG card available for under $75 at 7 online stores (newegg.com had the lowest price at $66), while the OWC card is available at macsales.com for $50. The warranty for these two are not even close; the SIIG carries a lifetime warranty while OWC only offers a 2 year warranty.
The only annoyance I had with both cards is that they are recognized in the PCI area of the System Profiler, but the type is considered SCSI. Since this was the same on both cards, this must be how they have to be programmed to work properly. I just didn't expect to see any mention of SCSI in a new SATA card.
If you are running out of space and you want a fast and easy hardware solution, a SATA PCI card is it. Both cards have their plusses and
minuses. it was a close race--both win 4.5 stars--but OWC edges to the lead with price and speed.
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The Good: For SIIG, consistant performance, lifetime warranty and four active ports. For OWC, better speed and external port options
The Bad: For SIIG, lower overall transfer speeds than OWC and no external ports. For OWC, more fluctuation in performance than SIIG and only two ports active at one time.
The Skinny:
The results are in and it was virtually a tie! Both cards get 4.5 stars, but we had to chooose our favorite. We opted for the OWC based on speed,
versatility and price
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