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Re: [OM] Missing in action . . . and OT Mac question

Subject: Re: [OM] Missing in action . . . and OT Mac question
From: Chuck Norcutt <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 08 Apr 2012 07:46:15 -0400
Don't waste a 6GB connection on a normal hard drive.  Whether 3GB or 6GB 
those are the instantaneous transfer speeds.  A mechanical hard drive 
spends most of its time moving the heads from track to track and, once 
there, waiting on rotational delays for the right sector to come around. 
  Consequently you don't see a whole lot of the speed difference between 
3GB and 6GB. You may recall the old adage: "All computers wait at the 
same speed".  Dedicate the 6GB channels to the SSDs where the difference 
will be evident.  But even if you can't do that an SSD on a 3GB channel 
will blow away a hard drive on a 6GB channel.

I'm reminded of how slow disks can be by using diskettes as the more 
extreme case.  Back in the early days of OS/2 we had a problem of 
installation size growing larger and larger and requiring more and more 
diskettes and more and more time.  We decided we needed to start using 
compression which would reduce the number of diskettes but were 
concerned about actually increasing the installation time due to the CPU 
time required to decompress everything.  I worked with a guy from IBM 
France who had developed a new lossless compression algorithm which I 
adapted for speed.  I discovered that evan a slow 286 was fast enough to 
decompress one track from a diskette during the time that it took for 
the diskette drive head to move from one track to the next.  That meant 
no delay at all for decompression and both reduced diskette requirements 
and reduced installation time from having to read fewer diskettes.  It 
was a lesson that mechanical stuff is really slow even when measured in 
milliseconds.

Chuck Norcutt


On 4/8/2012 12:03 AM, Moose wrote:
> On 4/7/2012 6:33 PM, Chuck Norcutt wrote:
>> Seems to be pretty nicely spec'd as is but can't you add another SATA
>> III adapter card?
>
> It has 6 SATA headers, but only 2 are 6GB, the others 3GB - which is, of 
> course already faster than what I have now.
> Still, I spend a lot of time waiting on PS, and would like to make it fly. I 
> don't honestly know if an expansion card
> can achieve full SATA III. I used to know something about bus speeds, but I 
> haven't kept up.
>
> My assumption about this motherboard is that it only has 2 because of some 
> bottleneck or other elsewhere in the
> components/design.
>
> I really dislike the process of moving to a new computer. I don't just let 
> some software move everything over. There's
> always such an accretion of apps and 'stuff' on the old one that I don't 
> need, don't use, don't remember I have, that I
> like to start fresh with the basics, bringing across what I find I need/want 
> when that happens.
>
> As far as I can tell, for anyone but a true registry wizard, the registry of 
> any well used computer is full of junk.
> None of the cleaners really does a through job. I can't see passing that on. 
> Also, of course, going to 64 bit changes
> things.
>
> So some delay until the right thing appears isn't all bad. :-)
>
> Fly Me to Moose
>
-- 
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