[geeks] The new IPC/LX, from Dell?

[Lionel Peterson]

On Nov 18, 2009, at 10:26 AM, nate at portents.com wrote:

> eSATA has a higher peak throughput, but two eSATA ports means two  
> eSATA
> devices (assuming the eSATA chipset doesn't support port  
> multipliers), vs.
> FW800 which supports up to 63 devices.

eSATA is the unfiltered, unaltered native connection between drive and  
controller. FW and USB add overhead and impose limits on performance.  
Informal 'ghost' tests have 30 Gig system images taking 10-12 minutes  
on eSATA, and twice as long on USB 2.0. I'd put FW between those two,  
closer to eSATA, but not the same.

Stringing 63 drives on one wire sounds great, but I have to wonder how  
practical it is for real-world applications where you want to access  
multiple spindles at the same time. Single drive access spread across  
all spindles (but one at a time) would be pretty good, I assume...

Lionel