Raptor Hard Drive, advice needed

[R.Youden]

OK, I need some help here. I was looking at getting a general update for my G4 PowerMac spending around £200-250 on it. OK so I got Tiger on Ed discount, £60 gone. I will probably get another 512Mb of RAM, £40. That leaves me about £100 left to spend. I thought about another optical drive being a combo drive but that is a maybe (If I want to direct copy a CD I put it in my PowerBook and mount it via networking).

I already have two hard drives in my computer (2x120GB) but I saw there Raptor hard drives on the net. The are only small drives at 36GB but they run at 10,000rpm which is VERY fast. This is what I was thinking. If I put Tiger and my Applications on the Raptor drive will I notice a huge speed increase? I was thinking that I probably would, plus it leaves my other drives free for university work and MP3's and videos etc...

Anyone here used a Raptor and does my idea make sence?

[cwedl]

My Friend just bought a raptor drive for his pc (the 70Gb version), you can see a big improvement in performance expecially in gaming (the games load up much faster!), I don't know if this will show as much difference on the mac, but you should see some improvement.

[daveL]

I have two of the 74 GB drives. They are damn fast. You will definitely notice short boot times and app launches.

[keysersoze]

I have two of the 74 GB drives. They are damn fast. You will definitely notice short boot times and app launches.

Yeah, I've only got one, but it kicks the crap out of every other drive I have ever used. It makes a clicking noise (like it's accessing something) every now and then, but I kind of like it. 74GB is faster than the 36...

[CanadaRAM]

Question is though: yeah, it might knock 10 seconds off booting or loading a large program, but what then? If you're like me, you reboot about once a week and apps are open pretty much all the time.

How much difference does the Raptor make during work -- once the apps are open?

It woudn't be worth the trouble to me just to have a quicker load time.

BV, your studio uses Raptors as scratch drives for Photoshop, right? How much difference does it make during your workflow?

[daveL]

Question is though: yeah, it might knock 10 seconds off booting or loading a large program, but what then? If you're like me, you reboot about once a week and apps are open pretty much all the time.

How much difference does the Raptor make during work -- once the apps are open?

It woudn't be worth the trouble to me just to have a quicker load time.

BV, your studio uses Raptors as scratch drives for Photoshop, right? How much difference does it make during your workflow?
It really depends how your system set up. If the Raptors are your boot, then your swap space and temp directories (/private/tmp, /var/tmp) will also be on the drive, so any temporary files will be created/deleted on the drive; that alone can make a huge difference, if the apps you use rely heavily on temp files. As always, it depends.

[Hoef]

Interesting question .... looking towards a raptor myself and now that Tiger came out, no more excuses!

[Blue Velvet]

BV, your studio uses Raptors as scratch drives for Photoshop, right? How much difference does it make during your workflow?

74gb scratch & boot drives. We like them -- I'd have one at home in the dual 1.4 G4 if they weren't SATA.

Richard: I doubt that your G4 will take them as they are SATA drives.

I can't make any empirical statements on their qualities over 'vanilla' drives but the whole experience of using them makes using the work G5s seem very quick and smooth.

We're not that affected by their boot/app start-up uses as the Macs are left on 24/7 but on the occasional reboot that too happens very quickly.

[solvs]

Richard: I doubt that your G4 will take them as they are SATA drives.
That's what I was thinking too. Unless you buy a Serial/ATA card, but you're still running off of the PCI bus. I think for the price it might be better to just get a larger P-ATA IDE hard drive, better video card, or more RAM. That'd be a better idea than the few extra seconds you'd get from the Raptors.

[johnj]

I have two 74 Raptors in Raid 0 in my PC. Even compared to the Seagates they replaced, they are crazy fast - especially noticeable in Photoshop and video encoding.

[R.Youden]

I thought that the SATA thing was an issue. I have seen the following article on a website selling a 73GB Raptor ATA-100 (which my comp uses) 10,000. Is that a typo on there part, or is that an old model? I take it that no one else makes ultra fast hard drives for ATA-100 then.

[Blue Velvet]

I thought that the SATA thing was an issue. I have seen the following article on a website selling a 73GB Raptor ATA-100 (which my comp uses) 10,000. Is that a typo on there part, or is that an old model? I take it that no one else makes ultra fast hard drives for ATA-100 then.

That is a typo, I'm afraid.
Sounds like you have the same Mac as me.

Either get a new video card or do what I did and spend some money making it quiet. Verax M10 + M11 kits have made using this Mac a far more pleasurable experience... I maxed the RAM to 2gb about 6 months ago.

[Fredstar]

While we are on the subject of the Western Digi Drives, how loud is the clicking noise? Would it be noticeable if say your Pmac was half a metre away and is it annoying or bearable?

[Blue Velvet]

While we are on the subject of the Western Digi Drives, how loud is the clicking noise? Would it be noticeable if say your Pmac was half a metre away and is it annoying or bearable?

Depends on other background noise. Ours are in the work Macs and it's a noisy office with lots of people and machines with fans... I've never heard them at all.

[R.Youden]

Ah well, scrap the Raptor idea! I like the look of those cooling fans because it is very loud when I run it and it gets a bit annoying from time to time. Also is it worth the 2GB of RAM. I saw somewhere people saying that beyond 1GB you dont see any gains? Also is there an English site for the Veraz M10 + 11 as the only site I found was in German!

[Blue Velvet]

Ah well, scrap the Raptor idea! I like the look of those cooling fans because it is very loud when I run it and it gets a bit annoying from time to time. Also is it worth the 2GB of RAM. I saw somewhere people saying that beyond 1GB you dont see any gains? Also is there an English site for the Veraz M10 + 11 as the only site I found was in German!

This is where I got my fans from. The price has come down a bit too.
http://www.pcsilent.de/enpd_verax_macintosh_g4_quiet-veraxm10m11.asp

Installing them was a 3-4 hour job taken at a cautious pace -- it's a bit fiddly in places. Don't expect total silence but the difference was well worth it. This is where I first read about the Verax kits:
http://www.g4noise.com/

Maxed RAM? Well, why the hell not? :D
I thought the jump from 1 to 1.5 was def. noticeable and the 2 was more for completions sake...

[R.Youden]

I imagine that this would void a warrenty! How far can you go before voiding a warrenty on an expandable computer. OK new HD, more RAM, extra optical drive... but I imagine that this is a no no (bugger I have nearly 2 years left on my warrenty!)

[Blue Velvet]

I imagine that this would void a warrenty! How far can you go before voiding a warrenty on an expandable computer. OK new HD, more RAM, extra optical drive... but I imagine that this is a no no (bugger I have nearly 2 years left on my warrenty!)

Yes, this would void your warranty. There's a new heatsink to go over the processors and a custom fan-hood to go over that heatsink which directs the air straight out of the case. There are also replacement fans for the powersupply and the big fan that sits in the bottom of the case.

Even though I had 6 months remaining on my warranty, I threw caution to the wind and went ahead with it 'cos the noise was driving me up the wall. The racket made using iTunes pointless, except with closed-cup headphones...

[R.Youden]

If I play iTunes loud enough it is not too much of a problem ;)

[FFTT]

I'm wondering if a pair of 74GB Raptors would be a problem with audio recording.
I've read mixed comments about noise issues.

Would I be that much better off with a stock 160 SATA
spending my money on 2 GB's of RAM?

I also wonder what happens if you run both a stock SATA drive
along with the faster Raptor.

Seems to me that you would want both drives to run at the same speed.


Just curious

[SpaceMagic]

Good thread.

I've been thinking about getting a Raptor 36GB for my boot drive. Why do people say the 74gb one is faster? Aren't they essentially the same drive?

Are they really noisy? Or about the same as my stock 160gb seagate?

Any response will be thanked!

SpaceMagic

[keysersoze]

Good thread.

I've been thinking about getting a Raptor 36GB for my boot drive. Why do people say the 74gb one is faster? Aren't they essentially the same drive?

Are they really noisy? Or about the same as my stock 160gb seagate?

Any response will be thanked!

SpaceMagic

Space- here's some reference for you-

http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20040123/wd740-05.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20041116/command_queuing-02.html

I pointed you to specific pages, but you can read the whole article of course!
:)

[johnj]

Good thread.

I've been thinking about getting a Raptor 36GB for my boot drive. Why do people say the 74gb one is faster? Aren't they essentially the same drive?

Are they really noisy? Or about the same as my stock 160gb seagate?

Any response will be thanked!

SpaceMagic

The 74s are 2nd Gen. Raptors and use Tagged Command Queuing while the 36s don't - much faster.

My Raid0 Raptors are very noisy, heard even over my 6 fans. When I defragment (I know - no worry for a mac user) I have to leave the room, sounds like the things gonna blow up! :eek:

I have a SATA Seagate 160 for data storage and it is whisper quiet by comparison. Personally, I would never trust storing files on a Raid0. I have XP and Apps on the Raid where I get the performance gains and store on other drives.

[SpaceMagic]

Thanks for replies. Hopefully this helps Richard too.

I'm thinking of getting the 74Gb ones but they cost so much! I mean over £100 for a 74gb hard disk is unbelievable!

[Lacero]

I'd put more money towards faster RAM than a faster HD.

[R.Youden]

This has really helped me thanks. I know that I cannot fit a SATA drive in my mac but I think I am going to get an internal SATA PCI card. I just think that it will be an investment cos SATA will be the way to go soon. Also it gives me the best of both worlds, ATA and SATA. Just a bit of fun. That is why i got this PowerMac over a G5 iMac so I can play with it an expand it.

[Blue Velvet]

This has really helped me thanks. I know that I cannot fit a SATA drive in my mac but I think I am going to get an internal SATA PCI card. I just think that it will be an investment cos SATA will be the way to go soon. Also it gives me the best of both worlds, ATA and SATA. Just a bit of fun. That is why i got this PowerMac over a G5 iMac so I can play with it an expand it.

I've read here that these cards can interfere with the Mac being in sleep mode. Can't personally confirm it but if this may be an issue, then it might be worth doing a little more research.

I briefly considered it for a day or two before ruling it out.

[CanadaRAM]

The 74s are 2nd Gen. Raptors and use Tagged Command Queuing while the 36s don't - much faster.

My Raid0 Raptors are very noisy, heard even over my 6 fans. When I defragment (I know - no worry for a mac user) I have to leave the room, sounds like the things gonna blow up! :eek:

I have a SATA Seagate 160 for data storage and it is whisper quiet by comparison. Personally, I would never trust storing files on a Raid0. I have XP and Apps on the Raid where I get the performance gains and store on other drives.
TCQ (whay Western Digital calls it, or Native Command Queuing as everyone else calls it) doesn't help at all with speed.

1) The overhead of TCQ can actually down access in typical desktop usage. It is primarily of benefit only in multi user server-type usage patterns in multi-disk RAID arrays.
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200406/20040625TCQ_1.html

2) Your Mac can't address it anyways because TCQ/NCQ must be supported by the SATA controller in the machine. No Mac does, nor any SATA card I know of.

If you are experiencing faster performance on the second generation Raptors, I can guarantee it's not because of TCQ.

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com

[SpaceMagic]

TCQ (whay Western Digital calls it, or Native Command Queuing as everyone else calls it) doesn't help at all with speed.

1) The overhead of TCQ can actually down access in typical desktop usage. It is primarily of benefit only in multi user server-type usage patterns in multi-disk RAID arrays.
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200406/20040625TCQ_1.html

2) Your Mac can't address it anyways because TCQ/NCQ must be supported by the SATA controller in the machine. No Mac does, nor any SATA card I know of.

If you are experiencing faster performance on the second generation Raptors, I can guarantee it's not because of TCQ.

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com

Tom's Hardware site said TCQ speeds things up considerably :confused: who knows.

[R.Youden]

I've read here that these cards can interfere with the Mac being in sleep mode. Can't personally confirm it but if this may be an issue, then it might be worth doing a little more research.

I briefly considered it for a day or two before ruling it out.

I saw one post somewhere that a user said they where great! Anyway I cant quite afford one at the moment but IF I do get a raptor in my G4 I will let you know how I get on.

I must admit that this is the first time that I have found anything not to be compatible with my G4. I suppose there always will be things but this is the first and it is really strange. I suppose the computer is over 2 years old now and is to be expected but it is still damn fast and with the RAM I have ordered will be even faster. Have you found anything else that does not work with the G4 but does with the G5's

[Blue Velvet]

I saw one post somewhere that a user said they where great! Anyway I cant quite afford one at the moment but IF I do get a raptor in my G4 I will let you know how I get on.

I must admit that this is the first time that I have found anything not to be compatible with my G4. I suppose there always will be things but this is the first and it is really strange. I suppose the computer is over 2 years old now and is to be expected but it is still damn fast and with the RAM I have ordered will be even faster. Have you found anything else that does not work with the G4 but does with the G5's

It's not that they aren't great but that they might interfere with Sleep mode. A couple of people here said that they did have them but that they never put their Macs into sleep anyway...

[Hoef]

I just inserted my old WD 40 GB drive in an external enclosure and suddenly remembered the whining noise it makes. Does the raptor do this as well .... very loud whining :mad: I don't mind clicking I hate whining

[johnj]

I just inserted my old WD 40 GB drive in an external enclosure and suddenly remembered the whining noise it makes. Does the raptor do this as well .... very loud whining :mad: I don't mind clicking I hate whining

My Raptors don't whine but they do click like crazy.

[Hoef]

My Raptors don't whine but they do click like crazy.

Gotta love modern day electronics :rolleyes:

[SpaceMagic]

My Raptors don't whine but they do click like crazy.

I heard they're using Crickets instead of puppies now for the axel.

[Lord Blackadder]

I put an SIIG brand PCI SATA controller in my Dual 533 with a Hitachi 250GB 7200RPM drive, and the speed increase was very significant over my old stock 7200RPM drive. I haven't had any sleep issues or other problems at all, but my machine is a Digital Audio, not an MDD.

If the Raptor has the same performance gain over my Hitachi SATA drive as the Hitachi had over my original drive I'd say it is definitely worth it to get a Raptor. Anyway I still have one SATA channel free...

I boot my machine every day so a faster boot time would be useful to me.

[R.Youden]

I think that fast HD's are the way to go with the macs now. OK you have faster CPU's and more memory but you still got to get the data out! Has anyone here booted off an SATA PCI card?