I am about to buy a new mac pro in the coming weeks and just have a question about the wd velociraptor drives. I am thinking about getting one and using that as my boot drive (I have heard these 10k drives are quite quick). I use final cut studio 3 heavily and work mostly with hdv and avchd codecs. I was just wondering if there would be a notable difference between using the velociraptor drive or using a 7200 rpm drive? (WD Black). I am all about saving time on my projects so if there was a significant speed increase (rendering, exporting, converting) I will definately upgrade to the Velociraptor drive. So I was just wondering if anyone has had experience with these drives and specifically if there is an advantage in the video edting realm. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
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Advantage of 10k Hard Drive???
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I've been using a velociraptor as my Mac Pro Boot drive for the last year and I think it's terrible. It's very, very loud, and gets hot too. Sure, it's pretty fast, but an Intel X25 could whip it. I am going to sell it and get an X25 as soon as they are back in stock.
I'm sure Nanofrog will chime in with a more informed response, but the basic advantage to a 10K RPM drive is reduced latency. The faster spinning platters mean that you spend less time waiting for the correct sector/block to be under the read/write head.
However, larger drives with added density like the WD Black equipped with large caches are also very fast... (I'm thinking almost as fast but not sure) but they certainly offer better $/GB ratios.
I don't think you would notice much difference in single drive performance between a Raptor and a WD Black. An SSD on the other hand is another matter
BTW, I'm guessing you've ruled out SSD's due to cost?
There's a minuscule advantage in speed, but like ventro said, the drives operate hot and loud. An Intel or OCZ SSD on the other hand, is cool, silent, and will rape the Velociraptor in the butt
The Velociraptor's are nice, but for single drive operation, the advantage is random access. The VR's capable of 7ms or so, while a Caviar Black is 12ms or so. I have both, and those are the figures I've come up with consistently. Random Acces speeds are good for quick loading of OS's and applications. That's what SSD's truly shine at, but as VirtualRain's thinking, I'm also assuming this isn't feasible due to cost constraints.
As your usage is video/graphics work, you need sequential throughput due to the largish data files, so the Caviar Black, or any other large drive with high platter densities would be better. Better yet, get a few of them, 3 or better yet 4, and make a stripe set (RAID0). That will provide the throughput you require for your described usage. Everything would go on it btw, OS, apps, and data. Just make sure you have a drive (or multiples) for backups.
Since the cost of a 300GB VR is ~$230 (before MIR of $30), you can get a pair of Caviar Blacks. As you seem to at least be interested in one of each, you can get 3 Blacks for the same money, and be far better off.
That doesn't include any drive for backup of course, but it's still a better way to go IMO. Worst case, use the OEM drive with the system as the initial backup disk. No additional cost to begin with, but be aware that you're going to need more than that soon I would imagine. Either a single large drive, or even a second array, perhaps even attached via an eSATA card and located in a RAID enclosure (it can be done inexpensively, and can contain a considerable amount of storage capacity).
I've not had any noise or heat issues with my VR. But there's no mechanical drive that can compete in terms of Random Access performance with an SSD either. Even RAID, though improved, isn't feasible for this either (realistic drive quantity).
But the worst I've ever encountered for noise and heat, are 15k rpm SAS drives (i.e. Seagate Cheetah's or Fujitu's). Whirring oven that can make any case vibrate with a nice BUZZZZZ sound (without vibration dampeners; i.e. O-rings). And push the internal temps noticably (CPU, chipset,...).
Colorful.
Make a partition at the top of the RAID for your OS and apps (I did 128GB total) and you will never want a SSD. Your system will always feel snappy, especially considering a 3 disk RAID using good HDs is as fast as any SSD.
Have SSDs caught up with 10k drives on write speeds yet? Between that and the unknown long-term effects of pagefiles being on them, that's my main concern (after the still-too-high $/GB).
I honestly doubt that, there's no hard drive set up that will ever beat any SSD when it comes to latency and making a partition at the top of the RAID has nothing to do with speed or performance. It'll get fragmented over time regardless of where the data is.
SSD are almost always at .01ms where hard can only be 5ms or faster. RAID does not make latency lower, just improves seq and random performance. In fact, some RAID setup will add more latency to overall performance. SSD in RAID0 is even better. 2x good SSD in RAID0 will not only rape most 4xRAID0 HD, but also exceed some RAID controller's ability to provide bandwith in such that it'll overheat.
It all depends on what the person needs, if he needs super fast seq performance with large amount of storage, than RAID0 of fast large drives. If he wants snappiness and high random performance regardless of space and cost, SSD will always make the list, there's never any HD setup that'll beat a good SSD.
Are you talking about random write or seq write? They both are different beast for different types of SSD. SLC SSDs has beaten both 10K and 15K drives when in both seq and random write. MLC SSD is a different story, seq speed is better than 10K but random still sucks a bit.
Were I you, I'd hold off on the velociraptor for now (I use one for my boot/apps disk). Just get the fastest (lowest seek time) 7200 rpm drive for your boot disk, and use that until SSDs are a bit more competitive. While the VR is a bit nicer, the advantage doesn't justify the cost at this point, when faster disks are soon to be cheaper as well.
I have 4 VelociRaptors in my Mac Pro at the moment. I cannot hear them when they're working and they run very cool. Right now they're running at around 35ºC. My room is pretty quiet, so that's a plus. The computer is very responsive and very fast. I did consider getting 4 SSDs, but I couldn't justify spending $1500 on 4 drives that won't even give me the same capacity.
Short stroking can be quite usefull.
I decided to keep it simple, as it could be mitigated anyway (depending on usage pattern), due to simultaneous access of both arrays (the heads can't be in two places at once).
What exactly are you doing?
Just read in the OS/application, then access concentrates on the second partition based array for data writes?
Assuming this is the case, it would work out fairly well, but then again, it's essentially the same as a single partition per disk array (not much, if any simultaneous access). Limiting the OS/apps to the outermost tracks do keep it (OS) from being sprawled out, and does help.
2 TB drives are not compellingly cheaper...yet. Also, they're all 5400 rpm as of now, and therefore posess longer seek times.
Short Stroking (basic, IT/enterprise viewpoint of advantages)how apropos?
Short Stroking (implementation done by Tom's Hardware)
Hope this helps.
Short Stroking (basic, IT/enterprise viewpoint of advantages)
Short Stroking (implementation done by Tom's Hardware)
Hope this helps.
I was making a joke...
The Seagate 1.5TB 7200RPM's have received some killer reviews, with some speeds approaching the 'Raptor.
Yes the inner tracks on the 1.5TB 7200RPM drives are comparable to the VelociRaptor due to the surface density, but when you fill up the drive, the 10,000RPM drive will still be just as fast while the 7200RPM will have slowed down.