In his latest YouTube video, Clark explores Ultra320 SCSI performance on his classic Amiga 4000D—this time with a powerful Cyberstorm PPC accelerator driving the setup. It’s the next major step in a setup journey plagued by previous hardware woes, now mostly resolved. With that behind him, Chris turns his attention to pure speed: benchmarking, overcoming partitioning limits, and extracting every bit of performance from three blazing-fast Ultra320 SCSI drives.
These drives are connected via one of the fastest SCSI controllers ever made for the classic Amiga. And Chris isn’t just throwing hardware at the problem—he’s digging deep into how the Amiga’s vintage operating system interacts with modern storage tech. Throughout the video, he compares Ultra320 SCSI performance against other solutions, including CompactFlash via IDE, narrow SCSI, and ZuluSCSI devices.
The results are clear. Using both synthetic tools like DriveSpeed and real-world file transfer tests, Chris shows that Ultra320 SCSI blows the others away in throughput. But there’s a catch—HDToolBox. The aging partitioning utility stumbles with drives larger than 128GB, particularly due to CHS (cylinder-head-sector) limitations. Cue HDInstTools, a more capable utility that saves the day by properly handling wide SCSI and large block counts.
Chris also highlights the difference between synchronous and asynchronous SCSI modes. When configured correctly with appropriate cables and controller support, synchronous mode significantly boosts transfer speeds—up to 70MB/s or more in ideal conditions.
Still, even with blazing speeds, AmigaOS itself introduces bottlenecks, especially in workloads involving thousands of small files. While Ultra320 excels in large file transfers, its benefits taper off where filesystem and OS limits take over. It’s a reminder that storage performance isn’t just about hardware—it’s about the entire data pipeline.
In the end, this video isn’t just about Ultra320 SCSI performance. It’s about how to modernize a vintage system without losing touch with its roots. With his drives now fully partitioned and prepped, Chris is ready to move on to OS installation—and you’ll want to stick around for that. This deep dive is a must-watch for anyone trying to get the most out of their classic Amiga hardware.
