The 500gb in my 2011 i7 dual core is a Toshiba. I replaced it with a WD 750gb 7200rpm black and tests show it almost twice the read/write speed as the toshiba was.
based on what others have said on this forum, it sounds like the stock 500GB 5400rpm drives max out around 60-70 MB/s read/write, the 750GB 7200rpm scorpio black do about 120MB/s, the stock 500GB server drives do about 90-100MB/s, and if you raid stripe the stock server drives for 1TB, they can do 180-190MB/s.
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Are there any advantages to upgrading the stock drives to the WD Black Scorpio 750GB drives via a BTO system other than an increase in storage space? As I haven't seen any direct comparisons between the stock Seagate drives and the WD Black Scorpios, I'm wondering if the upgrade is worth it or if the performance is only marginal.
the scorpio blacks appear to be about 30% faster than the stock server hdd. so if you raid striped 2 black scorpios, you could theoretically get around 240MB/s read/write on a 1.5TB drive vs the 180MB/s or so with the 1TB stock drives.
to me it's a question of paying for the $100 upgrade plus sales tax on the total mini purchase ($1100 + 9% state sales tax) or paying $960 on amazon with no sales tax, so a $239 difference. as 180MB/s is plenty fast enough for me, i went with the amazon purchase, plus i get 3% kickback for using an amazon visa at amazon.com.