[OS X TeX] TeX Performance (MacMini)

[Maarten Sneep]

On 7 feb 2005, at 14:25, Peter Dyballa wrote:

>
> Am 07.02.2005 um 12:51 schrieb Steffen Wolfrum:
>
>> Hm, does it really make sense to have a fast external drive for the 
>> MacMini - regarding its Firewire 400(!) ?
>
> It's theoretically 400 MB/sec -- no rotating disk can reach this 
> transfer speed! They (2,5") usually have an internal limitation to 
> 40...50 MB/sec. The usually used ATA interfaces have in (very old) PIO 
> modes less than 20 MB/sec, in Ultra DMA mode 100 MB/sec transfer rate. 
> So you can connect via FireWire or USB-2 a bunch of fast disks fr 
> parallel access ...

Ahem: 400 Mb/sec, not MB/sec (bits, not bytes). That translates to a 
theoretical maximum of 50 MB/sec, in practice a little below that (but 
not as much below the theoretical maximum as with USB2: in practice 
FireWire 400 outpaces USB2 at 480 Mb/s.

That said: FW400 will probably keep up with all but the fastest drives.

Maarten

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