Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

2006 Mac Pro - Raptor 10krpm 150gig System Drive - Tired of it... new drives faster?

Sean Dempsey

Sean Dempsey

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Aug 7, 2006
1,622
8
I have had a 150 gig Raptor 10krpm drive as my system drive since I got this computer. The drive was dated at the time, but I wanted the 10krpm for my system drive.

Fast forward 3 years to today:
I only use about 70 gigs for my system drive. all it holds is OS X and apps, nothing else. All other files and documents are on other internal drives or external FW800 drives. So, my system drive doesn't need to be very big.

Here's my questions/problems:
1. The raptor feels slower. It just feels less snappy, I can't explain why. It's barely at half capacity, so it's got plenty of free space. And I have 5 gigs of ram, so my Page Outs are very low. The only thing that creates alot of page outs is when I start a VMWare session of windows XP. VMWare the app runs off the Raptor, but my actual 25gig XP "virtual machine" file runs off an external FW800 drive.


2. The NOISE from it's read/write is starting to make my angry every time my computer is beachballing and all I can hear is the Raptor going WARHHHHGGGGWRRRRGGGGRRRWWAAAAARRRHHHHGGGGG for what seems like minutes.


So I am wondering, now that it is 2010, if I went and bought a modern, regular 7200rpm drive, is it going to outperform the Raptor, and be quieter? Or since I only use 60gigs of a system drive, is getting a 500gig 7200rpm drive going to be pointless and not really improve any of my read/write speeds, except for maybe being a little quieter.



I've read here that modern parallel read/write technology in drives actually outpaces the old Raptor. Or, should I just get the VelociRaptor 300gig 10krpm drive if I want to really improve my read/write?


What's the current opinion or regular drives vs. the new VelociRaptor 300gig?
 
Addition:


If after 3 years, my system drive is still only 60gb, should I just go for a SSD? Would that significantly improve my drives performance? And I assume there is no noise?
 
Sean Dempsey said:
Addition:


If after 3 years, my system drive is still only 60gb, should I just go for a SSD? Would that significantly improve my drives performance? And I assume there is no noise?
Click to expand...

Sean, it's like night and day. The SSD is so fast as a boot drive that its like having a new computer. I like the Intel Gen 2 SSD drives, you would only need the 80gig and right now you can have one from NewEgg for around $200 bucks.

I've owned a lot of raptors in my PC days, still have a couple in the kids computers. But you would have to put 4x in raid 0 to get the feel of the SSD! lol
 
The late 300GB VR drive isn't going to be any faster… unless you stripe a couple of them or use RAID 5. Then the sequential access will be pretty good, with a okay random access times. However any SSD these days will slaughter the VR drives in terms of performance.

If you need the capacity, I would suggest the VR, but seeing you used only 60GB so far, I would get a SSD into that computer. However I am a bit bewildered how you only managed to use just 60GB in 3 years. I use more than that every other day!
 
alphaod said:
If you need the capacity, I would suggest the VR, but seeing you used only 60GB so far, I would get a SSD into that computer. However I am a bit bewildered how you only managed to use just 60GB in 3 years. I use more than that every other day!
Click to expand...

He is using it just for the system files and keeps data on sperate drives.
My OSX system is only around 20gb with the programs I use, but I have 1.5Tb of data.

I have my Intel partitioned 40/120 with 40gb for OSX and 120gb for Win 7 and still have about 50% free space on both.
 
But the new VR looks cute lying in its little heatsink bed.

I've not made the mental switch to solid state yet. There is something comforting about a spinning disk.

A couple of VR in a raid 0 would out perform an SSD as a scratch disk.
 
My Mac Pro storage situation is

150gig Raptor - System and Apps, only use 60 gigs.
320gig internal storage for work
320gig internal storage for personal
1000gig internal storage for AppleTV video storage
500gig external for system backup
500gig external for data backup
250gig external for... "you know"

So yeah, overall I have around 3 terabytes available. Storage is not an issue. Snow Leopard and all my apps barley crack 60 gigs.


When people say that an SSD is so much faster as a "boot" drive, do you really mean as a system drive? Because I "boot up" my Mac Pro maybe 1 or 2 times a month. My uptime right now is at 17 days, and usually gets near 21-24 days before I ever have to reboot.

I presume you mean that running OSX and Applications of an SSD is significantly faster, and not just booting up?
 
Sean Dempsey said:
When people say that an SSD is so much faster as a "boot" drive, do you really mean as a system drive? Because I "boot up" my Mac Pro maybe 1 or 2 times a month. My uptime right now is at 17 days, and usually gets near 21-24 days before I ever have to reboot.

I presume you mean that running OSX and Applications of an SSD is significantly faster, and not just booting up?
Click to expand...

Right, everything but your data is on the SSD. So the OS and Apps start up practically instantly. It makes a bigger difference in Windows for me, OSX always seemed snappy anyway.

Edit: If you dual boot a lot it saves time going back and forth.
 
If I buy a Retail X25-M, will it fit into a drive bay on the Mac Pro, or will I need to rig up something to fit it up in the optical bay with a new SATA cable and power splitter?

Ideally I'd like to just put it in bay 1, is that possible?
 
Sean Dempsey said:
If I buy a Retail X25-M, will it fit into a drive bay on the Mac Pro, or will I need to rig up something to fit it up in the optical bay with a new SATA cable and power splitter?

Ideally I'd like to just put it in bay 1, is that possible?
Click to expand...

Absolutely, get an Icy Dock for $20. Doesn't even use screws to mount the SSD and lines up perfectly, slides right in.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817994064

Read up before you buy SSD! A lot of new offerings coming out now from WD and other brands. Some are better at different tasks. The Intel X25-M has some of the fastest read times and makes a perfect boot/Apps drive. If your going to work with the drive to modify files or use as a scratch disk then the Crucial M225 or the Corsair P128 would be a better choices as they have very good read and write speeds.

Also at this point there is no way to optimize a drive formatted in HFS, so at some point performance may deteriorate with read/write times. You will need to image the drive and run an optimizer then restore the drive image back to get back full performance.

Based on what you indicated you just need a boot/OS/App drive to read from.
 
Sean Dempsey said:
or will I need to rig up something to fit it up in the optical bay with a new SATA cable and power splitter?
Click to expand...

If you have a 2009 MP, you can put it in the 2nd optical bay with absolutely 0 hassle. No need to split any power or SATA cable: the power+sata cable (backplane) is waiting there for you. Get one of theses (5$), and you're ready to roll.

http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=14110AC4781&vpn=Bay Rafter 2.5 to 5&manufacture=SCYTHE

Sean Dempsey said:
Ideally I'd like to just put it in bay 1, is that possible?
Click to expand...

Just wondering why? Why not put it in your 2nd optical bay and forget about it, while freeing your 4 bays for other drives?

Loa
 
Loa said:
If you have a 2009 MP, you can put it in the 2nd optical bay with absolutely 0 hassle. No need to split any power or SATA cable: the power+sata cable (backplane) is waiting there for you. Get one of theses (5$), and you're ready to roll.

http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=14110AC4781&vpn=Bay Rafter 2.5 to 5&manufacture=SCYTHE



Just wondering why? Why not put it in your 2nd optical bay and forget about it, while freeing your 4 bays for other drives?

Loa
Click to expand...

1,1 2006 Mac Pro

Reading the procedure for using the 2nd optical bay sounds like a lot of hassle and work. Not to mention the 40 dollars of spare parts to connect to the 2 other SATA ports on the MB. The disassembly of half my computer just does not sound fun.
 
GMink said:
Also at this point there is no way to optimize a drive formatted in HFS, so at some point performance may deteriorate with read/write times. You will need to image the drive and run an optimizer then restore the drive image back to get back full performance.
Click to expand...

Not need for that with Intel drives. They don't really loose speed compared to the massive speed decreases of Indilinx based drives.

My recommendation still is the Intel X25 G2. The new SandForce drives are certainly faster, especially with writing speeds, but there is no statement of how stable the controller is, yet. Plus, they are pricy!
 
Sean Dempsey said:
If I buy a Retail X25-M, will it fit into a drive bay on the Mac Pro, or will I need to rig up something to fit it up in the optical bay with a new SATA cable and power splitter?

Ideally I'd like to just put it in bay 1, is that possible?
Click to expand...
The retail versions have a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter with them, so you could put it in an HDD bay if you wish. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back