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Advice needed for new HD (sequential vs random speeds)

Loa

Loa

macrumors 68000
Original poster
May 5, 2003
1,725
76
Québec
Hello,

I'm looking to update some of my drives (mac pro 2009) and I'm hesitating between two drives. One of them has higher sequential R&W speeds while the other is faster in random R&W.

The drive is not going to be used for OS (got that on a SSD). The task which will test the drive the most is opening hundreds of NEF files in Photoshop (average file size = 25MB) as well as saving PS files (bigger file sizes) and saving hundreds of jpeg files in a batch (average file size = 7MB).

With such files sizes, is sequential or random speed more important?

Thanks.
 
Loa said:
Hello,

I'm looking to update some of my drives (mac pro 2009) and I'm hesitating between two drives. One of them has higher sequential R&W speeds while the other is faster in random R&W.

The drive is not going to be used for OS (got that on a SSD). The task which will test the drive the most is opening hundreds of NEF files in Photoshop (average file size = 25MB) as well as saving PS files (bigger file sizes) and saving hundreds of jpeg files in a batch (average file size = 7MB).

With such files sizes, is sequential or random speed more important?

Thanks.
Click to expand...
I would go with the drive that has better random access speed. It sounds as if this is a traditional hard drive. If so, cost permitting, I would recommend looking into an SSD as their random access speeds easily outperform a traditional HD.
 
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I need at least 6TB, so SSDs are out of the question. I know they're faster, that's why I use one for my OS.

What I don't know is whether reading or writing ~7MB files is big enough so that the random read speed isn't as important as the sequential speed.
 
Thanks. I'm hesitating between getting a WD black or a seagate Ironwolf. The 8TB ironwolf is faster all around except for 1MB writes (where it is 15% slower). Currently I can get them for the same price.

Not sure if I'm going to notice that 15% difference before I notice the extra 2 TB! :)
 
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