[rescue] WTB: Intel C2D Mac Mini

[nate at portents.com]

> Throwing one of those 2.5" raptors in a FW400 case would be a tremendous
> waste.  It would be much better to mod the Mini to give it an eSATA
> connector.

While I will grant you that the max transfer rate of 49 MB/sec of 1394a
(FW400) is lower than the average (116 MB/sec), max (153 MB/sec), and
burst (242 MB/sec) transfer rates of a WD Velociraptor WD3000GLFS drive,
transfer rates are not the only reason to use a hard drive/interface. 
Seek times and latencies are also very important, and potentially more
important for a lot of disk I/O tasks, especially when we're talking about
a boot drive in a computer that holds the OS and most of the applications.

I'd argue that most Mini users would be better off by booting off an
external 10k RPM Velociraptor in a FW400 case and using the internal (and
lower RPM) 2.5" drive for data storage or backup.

And sure, in an ideal world the Mini would have eSATA, and yes you could
hack it in, but not everyone wants to do this to their Mini:

http://www.erebos.net/articles/macmini_esata/macmini_esata.php

- Nate