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Amazing Hard Drive Speed Increase on Mac Pro

M

MarkCombs

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 30, 2006
45
0
Wow - I spent two weeks obsessing on what type of drive to put in my new 8-core Mac Pro (january 2008). I was all set on spending $$$ and go with two 1-TB Samsung's but at the last minute I read this:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14380

which posted better World Bench ratings than a 10k Raptor and is quieter than WD's Green drives - NewEgg had been out of stock of this brand new drive and suddenly got a batch in and I ordered two of these (WD Caviar 640 Gig / 16 meg cache w/only 2 drive plates).

This drive is LIGHTNING fast....I've got before and after bench marks to post, I went from a 56.84 to a 102.91!!!!!!!!

Also, these installed so easily - not a single hitch!

Mark
 

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Compared to that Seagate you had in there, ANYTHING is faster :) I was unfortunate enough to get one of those as well, and they are garbage. The greenpower drives are nice for the cost/performance/efficiency, but certainly not the fastest :)
 
Fast!!!

I actually put up the wrong before bench mark, it was actually 56.84 before and 102.91 after that's almost 100% increase!
 
All I know is that 1tb Samsung drives has a high failure rate but it is fast and from what I've read around the web, the WD6400AAKS also has a fairly high failure rate but very fast operation.

Thats why I bought the 1tb seagate with the NS ending model with a high mtbf and its just a tad slower than the 150gb 10k raptor drive but reliability is #1 when it comes to a massive storage hdd.
 
I was thinking about picking up a couple of these drives too. However, on page 5 of the Tech Report review, it shows the new 640GB drive as being a lower performer as a boot drive. I'm guessing that this "slowness" is still significantly better than the stock 320GB. Are you using it as a boot drive? If so, what kind of improvement are you seeing with boot times and application launches?

Thanks!
 
jjahshik32 said:
All I know is that 1tb Samsung drives has a high failure rate but it is fast and from what I've read around the web, the WD6400AAKS also has a fairly high failure rate but very fast operation.

Thats why I bought the 1tb seagate with the NS ending model with a high mtbf and its just a tad slower than the 150gb 10k raptor drive but reliability is #1 when it comes to a massive storage hdd.
Click to expand...

wrong, the drives are very reliable. The issue was with Samsung's own HDD test utility. Also, a few users had issues with the drives being recognized by Via chipsets. I have had these drives in my Mac Pro now for 2 months and they're flawless.
 
Yes, I used XBench....

I bought two of these drive, one for an boot/application drive, and a 2nd one for data only, I'm going to use the stock 320 seagate it shipped with as a backup drive for time machine.

I went over and over the numbers from this review. My thinking was that it was in the middle of the pack as far as being a boot drive but so was the 1 TB drives, these drives were the quietist of the bunch, they were faster overall than anything else including Raptors (world bench) and they started up Doom very quickly, they just seemed to be overall better than everything else. I didn't need and entire TB, so 640 gigs was fine, so for $129 each, it seemed like a no brainer. I'm a photoshop geek, not a hardware guy but I can hold my own. I like the idea of a drive with just 2 platters, seems very efficient - less moving parts....

That's my two cents - they installed without ANY problems, no dead sectors and were up and running quickly.

Very pleased....

Mark
 
MarkCombs said:
Yes, I used XBench....

I bought two of these drive, one for an boot/application drive, and a 2nd one for data only, I'm going to use the stock 320 seagate it shipped with as a backup drive for time machine.

I went over and over the numbers from this review. My thinking was that it was in the middle of the pack as far as being a boot drive but so was the 1 TB drives, these drives were the quietist of the bunch, they were faster overall than anything else including Raptors (world bench) and they started up Doom very quickly, they just seemed to be overall better than everything else. I didn't need and entire TB, so 640 gigs was fine, so for $129 each, it seemed like a no brainer. I'm a photoshop geek, not a hardware guy but I can hold my own. I like the idea of a drive with just 2 platters, seems very efficient - less moving parts....

That's my two cents - they installed without ANY problems, no dead sectors and were up and running quickly.

Very pleased....

Mark
Click to expand...


Mark,

Thanks for the response. I was thinking about doing the exact same thing. One for boot and apps, one for data, and banish the 320GB to Time Machine. Sounds like a great setup!

Jared
 
hmm I guess I was mistaken by then WD6400AAKS as the WD7500AAKS. I know that the WD7500AAKS have a horrible DOA and failure rate but so far alot of people like the WD6400AAKS.

Now i'm looking into replacing my raptor drive for a WD6400AAKS for increase in space while faster performance.
 
barefeats still had the 7200.11 as the fastest terabyte drive last time i checked...
 
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