Ultra66 __> FastTrak66 -is there any increase in speed?

[CMonster]

I mean seriously, except for the name "FastTrak" is there any increase in speed for a single drive system? As I understand it the purpose is for IDE RAID; so is there any advantage of the FastTrak cards in a non-RAID system?

[Mntsnow]

Cmonster,

Truthfully I have only seen about a 6.5 to 8% performace gain in Single drive ata66 speeds compaired to single drive ata33 speeds! (and this was benchmarks in actual "feel" I didnt notice a thing really)
Not what you would call "money well spent" http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/frown.gif As you noted I too have seen great performance increases with my raid setups. (averaged 29.4% increase in the 3 systems that I did this on..1 win98, 1 win98se and 1 win2k system) That made me happier...Still not near what my SCSI raid setup got but was a lot cheaper! so dollar for dollar the IDE RAID was the best bang for the buck.... but back to your original question..The IDE ata66 single drive was not even in the running!

[This message has been edited by Mntsnow (edited 07-08-2000).]

[CMonster]

Thanks Mntsnow,

Actually my query was for the benefit of those who think that they will see some performance gain just by modifying their Ultra ATA66 card into a "FastTrak" card, but not implimenting a RAID.

I keep hearing a lot of talk by people wanting to hack the Promise ATA66 cards, but truthfully, I suspect that if they are not going to impliment a RAID then they will not see ANY increase in speed.

Even my son, caught up in the frenzy of "why not upgrade," set about hacking the Primise card on his single-drive-system -thinking he would see a performance boost.

But for me - what do you think of the Adaptec 2930? Do you think SCSI hard disk performance would be acceptable @ 20Mb/s or should I bite the bullet and get the 2940?

[Mntsnow]

Sorry Cmonster...I just re-read you first post and now see what you were after....I would venture to say that in a single drive system when not using the raid it is NOT worth the effort to convert to the ATA66 standard. Truthfully I believe the majority of the performace increase in the 66 drives is thru the slightly lower access times and largely due to the increased rotaional speeds that is present in most of the 66 drives.

As for the controller cards I would suggest the fastest card you can afford. (truthfully a Siig or Tekram card will be half the cost of the compairable Adaptec card with the same performace and both have great support.)

just my 2 cents http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[Roy]

another $0.02 ~

I've been running an ATA66/7200 monster at UDMA33 with a 33/5400 as backup. The big guy was showing signs of corruption so I switched them.

The 5400 rpm gave new meaning to slow, all else being identical. Platter speed makes a major difference, more so than data transfer speed I suspect.

Oh ... I have a Promise Ultra66 card but it did not want to work with my MSI 6163Pro mobo. So I abandoned it and don't think I'm missing much.

Also, someone here was wondering about 66 vs 33 for multitrack audio recording. After doing a little arithmetic I found that at 33MB/s the 32b/48KHz track count is just under 172. More than enough for a garage studio. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif

[daveleau]

Sorry, I have no numbers but bootup time and file access is faster. If you already have the hardware go ahead and do it. If you have to buy hdds, it depends. It may/ may not be worth it. I am happy with mine.
Dave

[Stan]

Yep, ditto Mntsnow !

What's the point to use a RAID card with only one disk ???
Your FastTrak66 would be just as good as an ULTRA66 !

BTW, I have received some info about the SuperTrak RAID5 card from Promise... nice...

It costs $289 and $499 for the PRO version (according to Pomise). It has 4 master channels and supports up 128MB EDO RAM (1 simm)
Unfortunately (for me), this card is only available in the US.

IT IS NOT FAIR !!!

Stan

[This message has been edited by Stan (edited 07-10-2000).]

[Ptrper]

Hey guys, I think that the point of this thread is why upgrade your card and risk ruining it if you're not going to implement it into a raid system. It would be pointless and would not make the single drive any faster...