Adding Raptor to Mac Pro

[Clydefrog]

Hello, i recently bought a WD Raptor 150gb HD, and was planning to install it tomorrow in my mac pro. My question is once I install it in one of the bay drives, do i need to format or do anything of sort? I just plan on having it as a rip drive.

-clydefrog

 

[synth3tik]

It does not hurt to do a quick format. This will take about 30 Sec.

 

[Clydefrog]

so all i have to do is to say go into disk utility and just do a quick format for my new drive

 

[SmurfBoxMasta]

so all i have to do is to say go into disk utility and just do a quick format for my new drive

Yep! go4it

 

[ideasman69]

raptor as a rip drive? thats silly..

make it ur primary drive and stick osx on it. your system will fly. use ur current drive as a data / rip drive.

 

[JesterJJZ]

raptor as a rip drive? thats silly..

make it ur primary drive and stick osx on it. your system will fly. use ur current drive as a data / rip drive.

I use my Raptor for scratch, cache and temporary files and stuff. Makes my Proapps much snappier. Are they gonna make any larger Raptors anytime soon?

 

[bigbossbmb]

I use my Raptor for scratch, cache and temporary files and stuff. Makes my Proapps much snappier. Are they gonna make any larger Raptors anytime soon?

I highly doubt it since the newer 7200rpm drives have caught up to it in speed. I don't see any reason to dump money on raptors any more... which is a good thing. However, I still use mine 'cause I don't want to buy another drive.

 

[Pressure]

I highly doubt it since the newer 7200rpm drives have caught up to it in speed. I don't see any reason to dump money on raptors any more... which is a good thing. However, I still use mine 'cause I don't want to buy another drive.

The higher capacity drives (750GB and 1.000GB) are indeed nearly the same performance these days.

 

[Blogger]

The higher capacity drives (750GB and 1.000GB) are indeed nearly the same performance these days.

Yes, but imagine what 10,000 RPM (or preferably 15,000) versions of those would be like.
Hard drives are still by far the slowest element in modern computers.

I don't suppose we'll see massive speed-ups until everything is solid state.
They're not particularly fast now, but they have much more scope for big speed increases in the future.

 

[netdog]

I use my Raptor for scratch, cache and temporary files and stuff. Makes my Proapps much snappier. Are they gonna make any larger Raptors anytime soon?

Yes, but if you make it your primary drive, it will definitely make Safari seem snappier.

 

[JeffDM]

I had a 150GB Raptor at one time, but I could not push it to consistently best the speed of a stripe on 2x 250GB 7200RPM drives, which were a lot cheaper and gave me better storage. It didn't change the boot time either, when used as a primary drive. The Raptor is irritatingly loud in comparison too. I just didn't see it worth the money, and I still don't. I think the money is much better spent on 500GB or larger 7200RPM drives.

 

[JeffDM]

Yes, but imagine what 10,000 RPM (or preferably 15,000) versions of those would be like.
Hard drives are still by far the slowest element in modern computers.

They're not even available in that size, and the faster drives are a little different. 300GB in 10k is $375 and up, in 15k it is $600, and not available in SATA or SAS form factor.

I don't suppose we'll see massive speed-ups until everything is solid state.
They're not particularly fast now, but they have much more scope for big speed increases in the future.

Solid state drives still aren't a panacea either. They might spec out well, but in actual practice, don't have a significant speedup compared to any current drives other than the 1.8" drives.

 

[Lord Blackadder]

I had a 150GB Raptor at one time, but I could not push it to consistently best the speed of a stripe on 2x 250GB 7200RPM drives.

That's pretty much the consensus these days - but a striped array is 100% less reliable than a single drive, so I'd prefer to have a Raptor or other single high-performance drive in that case.

Right now I'm running two Hitachi 7K250 250GB SATA drives, and I've resisted the urge to do a RAID 0 for just that reason.

 

[Blogger]

JeffDM,

That's why I said "Imagine". Larger drives have much higher data density, so at higher speeds they would be much faster.

Re: solid state drives, perhaps you should re-read what I wrote.

 

[JeffDM]

JeffDM,

That's why I said "Imagine". Larger drives have much higher data density, so at higher speeds they would be much faster.

Yes, but I still think it's meaningless because it's a treadmill problem. The higher RPM seems to exact a stiff capacity penalty. Improve on that, and it looks like it would improve the capacity of lower RPM drives at least as much.

Re: solid state drives, perhaps you should re-read what I wrote.

I really don't see anything that would change in the future either.

 

[Blogger]

Yes, but I still think it's meaningless because it's a treadmill problem. The higher RPM seems to exact a stiff capacity penalty. Improve on that, and it looks like it would improve the capacity of lower RPM drives at least as much.

Granted. But WD doesn't seem interested in perpendicular recording for the Raptors.

I really don't see anything that would change in the future either.

They're up to 200MB/s Read and 100 MB/s write already, it should get a lot higher over the next few years. Have a look here:
<http://www.stec-inc.com/product_search/sata_100to200_35_25.php>