FireWire HD Performance

[chemistry_geek]

I recently purchased an 80GB (7200 RPM) FireWire HD (from ClubMac) for backup purposes and I'm not very happy with the rate of transfer. I get about 10MB/sec from my 18GB UltraSCSI drive (specs below) and slightly less with my OEM 12GB UltraATA drive. Is this comparable to others' performance? I remember Apple touting that FireWire was supposed to be REALLY fast. I suppose I expected a little better performance, ~15MB/sec. I know that the limiting components will be the internal hard drives and system bus. Is ~10MB/sec on par with my system specs? I'm using an Adaptec 2930 SCSI card (Build to order option from Apple) and I know it's supposed to do ~10MB/sec - ~16MB/sec transfer rates. Is the system bus the problem here?

 

[sixthring]

Another limiting factor is the firewire chipset of the external drive. I got a 120GB Oxford911 chipset firewire drive and can transfer 1GB of data in little more than a minute from my blue imac 500mHz. Some chipsets just don't perform as expected.

 

[rharder]

10MB/sec is probably typical for non Oxford 911 chipsets. I couldn't tell you how fast those are (I've never used 'em) but the drives like the Maxtors that you get at Best Buy and whatnot are not very efficient. Keep in mind, though, that the theoretical max throughput for firewire is still only 40 or 50MB/sec.

-Rob