Technical Details

As we’ve been slowly winding down BlogMatrix for sometime, I decided to move my own blogs to my own domain and server. Having access to everything allowed me to write a BlogMatrix to WordPress converter.

I also had the relevant addresses redirected to my server, so techdetails.blogmatrix.com -> techdetails.agwego.com, which posed an issue with respect to permalinks, so with a little WordPress hacking I was able to write a pseudo BlogMatrix to WordPress permalink converter so most links will now work as expected. I have a complete duplicate site setup at home replete with DNS for testing purposes.

I’m still getting use to WordPress but so far it’s not too bad.

My other blog http://dinner.agwego.com/

I finally bit the bullet and bought my first Mac, but I didn’t want to go whole hog and buy the pro or iMac, so I went for the mini.  I was loath to use substandard hardware, so the 5400 RPM hard disk had to go, but what to do? I have seen a number of other mods, but most of them were very unsatisfactory since they modified the machine in such a way that could not easily be reversed, and I could buy a regular old 7200 RPM drive, but where’s the fun or performance in that. I settled on the Western Digital Velociraptor which weighs in at 300 GB and 10,000RPM, unfortunately the form-factor is slightly larger than a traditional laptop drive, so wedging it into the case wasn’t an option.

The hardest part of the whole build was sourcing the internal SATA to external eSATA cable which I got here:  http://www.cooldrives.com/esexcaitolex.html. I manufactured the mounting bracket myself, with wood and some good old chiseling. The rest of the work was reassembly and making sure the eSATA cable could be run outside the case properly without major disruption.

And of course the XBENCH numbers, overall I’m very happy with how everything worked out, and the really nice feature of the disk caddy is I can drop in the original disk for testing or any other disk if the need arises, the only other option I might consider is the dual drive disk caddy.

Larger disk numbers are better.

XBENCH 5400RPM:

Results	130.85
	System Info
		Xbench Version		1.3
		System Version		10.5.6 (9G2030)
		Physical RAM		4096 MB
		Model		Macmini3,1
		Drive Type		FUJITSU MHZ2120BH G1
...
	Disk Test	46.65
		Sequential	64.41
			Uncached Write	91.99	56.48 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Write	90.47	51.19 MB/sec [256K blocks]
			Uncached Read	32.45	9.50 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Read	106.86	53.71 MB/sec [256K blocks]
		Random	36.57
			Uncached Write	13.38	1.42 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Write	92.49	29.61 MB/sec [256K blocks]
			Uncached Read	67.95	0.48 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Read	109.77	20.37 MB/sec [256K blocks]

XBENCH 10,000RPM:

Results	161.56
	System Info
		Xbench Version		1.3
		System Version		10.5.6 (9G2030)
		Physical RAM		4096 MB
		Model		Macmini3,1
		Drive Type		WDC WD3000BLFS-01YBU0
...
	Disk Test	93.41
		Sequential	143.22
			Uncached Write	190.65	117.06 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Write	163.74	92.64 MB/sec [256K blocks]
			Uncached Read	81.75	23.92 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Read	230.15	115.67 MB/sec [256K blocks]
		Random	69.31
			Uncached Write	25.02	2.65 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Write	193.45	61.93 MB/sec [256K blocks]
			Uncached Read	125.65	0.89 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Read	216.22	40.12 MB/sec [256K blocks]