The results were from a full 320gb partition (or 298.1gb in all real life). I'd hope xbench would not skew disk speed tests based on how large the partition is or where on the disk it is located.
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iMac AL 24" Hard Drive Swap - Pics/Procedure inside
- Thread starter Tom Sawyer
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The results were from a full 320gb partition (or 298.1gb in all real life). I'd hope xbench would not skew disk speed tests based on how large the partition is or where on the disk it is located.
XBench doesn't skew results based on this. The disk itself just performs differently based on where the data is. XBench should give you an accurate representation of the read/write speed at that point in the disk.
Will replace my HD today
Tom Sawyer, you rock! Thanks for figuring it out for the rest of us.
I just recieved a 24" iMac today. I have a brand-new 10k Raptor that is just begging to be used, so I will be swapping the HD. The Raptor is smaller (170 GB) but that's large enough for my purposes and its reliability is a huge plus.
I have the Torx set but don't have compressed air or suction caps.. so off to the hardware store I go. I'll keep you all posted.
Tom Sawyer, you rock! Thanks for figuring it out for the rest of us.
I just recieved a 24" iMac today. I have a brand-new 10k Raptor that is just begging to be used, so I will be swapping the HD. The Raptor is smaller (170 GB) but that's large enough for my purposes and its reliability is a huge plus.
I have the Torx set but don't have compressed air or suction caps.. so off to the hardware store I go. I'll keep you all posted.
Thanks cajun! I was definitely glad to help out the group with if nothing else some entertaining pics!
Mmmm... a Raptor, very nice! Your machine is going to SCREAM! I would highly recommend running the fan control software (smcFanControl ) to bump up the fan speeds and put a little more airflow on that Raptor as they do run on the hot side. I have upped my fan speed to the just-audible level and it has dropped my temps nicely... at least 3 degrees C on all sensors and some even more.
Let us know how it goes and even post a benchmark if you get the chance!
Perhaps that's what I'm seeing. When I tested the 500, I had a 100gb System and an (empty) Work partition. I tested it on the 2nd partition IIRC. Benchmarks are fine and dandy but the system is very zippy and that's what really matters. Now Cajun's with that Raptor... is going to be ridiculously fast ! If only there were room for 2 drives internally and the Raid 0 of the Intel ICH controller/chipset could be tapped into... hoooahh...
now the raptors are pretty darn fast but the newest high capacity drives like the 750 and higher have come pretty close because of the density.
The nice thing about the raptor is the reliability though they are built like tanks(essentially commercial grade hardware)
The nice thing about the raptor is the reliability though they are built like tanks(essentially commercial grade hardware)
HD swap successful!
I swapped HDDs exactly as Tom Sawyer described. The total time for me was about an hour, because I was being super careful and I thought the whole thing was moderately challenging. Tom's instructions are right on. The Torx bits you need are T8 for most of the screws and a T6 for the two tiny screws holding the DVI connector. I think those bits are unusual choices, perhaps intentionally so. Usually a Torx bit set includes a T10 and sometimes a T5. I think Apple is definitely trying to keep people out of these computers.
The label on the display shows that it is a LG Phillips, made in Korea. I have a photo if anyone wants to see it or post it.
The Raptor looks quite nice in its new seating. I had to use a little adhesive (a drop of superglue) to stick the thermistor mounting bracket on it.
As I said, the total time for me was 1 hour. The suction cups and compressed air are both musts. I used two suction cups, one on each corner, and that was really easy. You could make do with one, but since I had to go out and buy them, I bought a package of two.
When I put the casing back on, I didn't do it quite right and didn't know until I couldn't get the memory bay cover back in place, so I re-did that step. Like with the old G5 iMac, the casing has to be slid into place a certain way to achieve a perfect fit.
This was quite the adventure, disassembling my wife's brand new computer. Personally, I prefer the inside of the old G5 iMac, which was a real breeze to open up (only TWO screws, and they were the kind that stayed in place). I am a little concerned about Apple switching to such a narrow form factor, since conceivably the market and pride won't really let them go back to a thicker model. With less available space, they might be restricted to cooler components, which might make the iMac less competitive in the desktop market. IMHO, a new iMac should always outperform any brand-new laptop out there.
If I were designing the iMac, I would have considered keeping the same internal design as the G5s (thicker, but so what, did that actually bother anyone?), using a quad-core CPU and a higher-end graphics card and using the extra space from having a 24" monitor to include two drive bays for a RAID array. But that's just me.
I swapped HDDs exactly as Tom Sawyer described. The total time for me was about an hour, because I was being super careful and I thought the whole thing was moderately challenging. Tom's instructions are right on. The Torx bits you need are T8 for most of the screws and a T6 for the two tiny screws holding the DVI connector. I think those bits are unusual choices, perhaps intentionally so. Usually a Torx bit set includes a T10 and sometimes a T5. I think Apple is definitely trying to keep people out of these computers.
The label on the display shows that it is a LG Phillips, made in Korea. I have a photo if anyone wants to see it or post it.
The Raptor looks quite nice in its new seating. I had to use a little adhesive (a drop of superglue) to stick the thermistor mounting bracket on it.
As I said, the total time for me was 1 hour. The suction cups and compressed air are both musts. I used two suction cups, one on each corner, and that was really easy. You could make do with one, but since I had to go out and buy them, I bought a package of two.
When I put the casing back on, I didn't do it quite right and didn't know until I couldn't get the memory bay cover back in place, so I re-did that step. Like with the old G5 iMac, the casing has to be slid into place a certain way to achieve a perfect fit.
This was quite the adventure, disassembling my wife's brand new computer. Personally, I prefer the inside of the old G5 iMac, which was a real breeze to open up (only TWO screws, and they were the kind that stayed in place). I am a little concerned about Apple switching to such a narrow form factor, since conceivably the market and pride won't really let them go back to a thicker model. With less available space, they might be restricted to cooler components, which might make the iMac less competitive in the desktop market. IMHO, a new iMac should always outperform any brand-new laptop out there.
If I were designing the iMac, I would have considered keeping the same internal design as the G5s (thicker, but so what, did that actually bother anyone?), using a quad-core CPU and a higher-end graphics card and using the extra space from having a 24" monitor to include two drive bays for a RAID array. But that's just me.
That's the trick. All the people in here giving bad advice about the iMac warranty not being voided by simply opening the case are spreading disinformation. It won't void the warranty if you cover your tracks well enough and obviously don't break any warranty void seals on heatsinks, etc but if Apple can tell in any way that you've opened the box they will refuse to repair the machine under warranty.
My old 20" iMac had a logic board go bad 6 weeks out of the one year warranty. I had kept putting off buying Applecare until it was too late. It cost me $450 to have Apple replace it where they would have swapped it for free.
As much as I would love to toy around inside my new 24" aluminum iMac I will never risk the warranty. I recommend a nice Firewire 800 HDD enclosure for those seeking to expand their HD real estate.
Once the 3 years including Applecare are up though I might very well go for it.
CONGRATS!!!! I bet the raptor looked sweet in there as well. Have you done a clean install or restore yet? Really looking forward to seeing some benchmarks!
Yeah, I probably should have mentioned that the aluminum casing has to go on "just so"... angled in chin first so to speak...
I agree... a thicker machine would be just fine if it gave some more options like dual drive, etc. My guess is that Apple will not take the iMac to that level of performance because at that point they are really approaching the performance of the Pro. Even the iMac in it's current incarnation is not THAT far removed from the Pro's performance. Obviously it won't have the expandability, but these machines are really fast as we all know.
I'm looking forward to some processor options opening up in the mobile T series like quad core... 3.0ghz, etc. Just a matter of time.
Glad everything went well for you! Enjoy!
I'm a bit skeptical of Xbench's HD results. While the Raptor got an overall higher score than the WD or the Seagate 7200.10 I would have thought the numbers would be much higher for the Raptor. One was even lower... the WD scored higher in 4K uncached reads than either of the drives. There is no doubt that at 10K and more cache the raptor should be faster in all scores. I know that my benching of a 320gb 7200.10's returned much better results in a PC than I got with my 500 (or 750) on the Mac. But... different benchmarking apps. There are a number of different benchmarking apps on the PC of course with lots of tweaking/overclocking etc. Sandra, ATTO, etc. If I still had a bootcamp install I would boot up in XP and see what kind of numbers those apps get; would be an interesting experiment.
Either way, I'm sure the machine is lightning fast with that Raptor!! Killer upgrade.
Either way, I'm sure the machine is lightning fast with that Raptor!! Killer upgrade.
Yes I agree
Yes, the 4k benchmark surprised me too. At least the other benchmarks were better than stock.
The real reason why I have a Raptor is because lately, the hard drives have been failing frequently on the computers in our household and at our office, and I find that it requires much more than $100 worth of labor to get everything in working order again. The 150 GB Raptors are about $125 more than a 7200 rpm counterpart and are supposed to be 10x more reliable. So if it lasts as long as the rest of the hardware, I think the saved labor of not having to replace and restore is a steal in $$$.
Yes, the 4k benchmark surprised me too. At least the other benchmarks were better than stock.
The real reason why I have a Raptor is because lately, the hard drives have been failing frequently on the computers in our household and at our office, and I find that it requires much more than $100 worth of labor to get everything in working order again. The 150 GB Raptors are about $125 more than a 7200 rpm counterpart and are supposed to be 10x more reliable. So if it lasts as long as the rest of the hardware, I think the saved labor of not having to replace and restore is a steal in $$$.
Obviously xbench scores need to be taken with a grain (pillar?) of salt.
I'd say when several benchmarked items show +20-60MB/sec performance difference and nets only +5 'points' over the overall score of the standard WD 320gb in my iMac - the results shouldn't be taken as gospel.
The Raptor is a fast drive, no doubt. For my purposes they do not have enough capacity to use a the sole drive in my iMac, but if paired with a nice big external FW800 disk for storage purposes...
I'd say when several benchmarked items show +20-60MB/sec performance difference and nets only +5 'points' over the overall score of the standard WD 320gb in my iMac - the results shouldn't be taken as gospel.
The Raptor is a fast drive, no doubt. For my purposes they do not have enough capacity to use a the sole drive in my iMac, but if paired with a nice big external FW800 disk for storage purposes...
One suggestion I have for you Tom is dont sell your OEM stock WD drive. When your machine goes in for service, you'll probably have to reinstall that drive before taking it in, as they may not work on the computer because it was modified by an end-user.
That would be against the law, and their own warranty, unless the hard drive itself was faulty.
Just because its against the law doesn't mean it can't be done computers are "complicated" and they can probably come up with any manner of reason that a replacement drive messed something up.
Any time service is done to our macs we pop in the stock ram and such just goes much easier.
Any time service is done to our macs we pop in the stock ram and such just goes much easier.
You are right that it makes things easier. However the burden of proof is on them to prove that your actions caused the fault. You can take them to court for this if you know you are right.
Certain things that could be problematic are if the screen breaks, this could be blamed on you removing it. However if there are is no visible damage then more than likely it is a hardware fault.
True... for as little as a 320 is worth these days it may be worth holding on to just in case. I got my 500gb Seagate back but they sent me a Barracuda 7200.9 (refurb of course) as a replacement. Still a great drive, same capacity. I'll probably just toss it on eBay and let it go for whatever it brings. Can't come up with a reason to keep it with 699gb of usable space in the iMac now.
Temperature Control
As you know the Raptor runs a little hotter than standard HDDs and the AL 24" iMac already tends to run on the hot side. TomSawyer has pointed out that heat stresses the components and they may fail sooner. I have had 2 Macs have HDDs fail within a year, which is not acceptable. Maybe because the computers ran too hot?
My 24" AL system reported 50-60 degrees on the Raptor drive (50 idle, 60 with heavy use) and the top of the computer felt at about the temperature that I like my coffee.
So I researched fan control options. There seem to be three solutions for controlling the fans:
a. Modify the system files AppleBlower.kext and AppleFan.kext, found in /System/Library/Extensions. Inside of these files are lists of numbers and temperatures which control when the fan goes on and off and how fast the fan ramps up when the CPU temperature increases. Apparently, nobody in these or other forums has yet given a complete explanation for what the numbers mean and how these files work, although some people seem to have gotten the rough idea through reverse engineering experiments. I messed around with this for a bit and when modifying the settings didn't seem to make a difference to my fan speeds, I gave up.
b. Download FanControl 1.1. This program modifies the system files mentioned above. It installs into your preference pane, which made it sound ideal. I tried it but it didn't work for my AL 24" iMac, perhaps because it was written for MacBooks which only have one fan.
c. Download smcFanControl 2.1.2. That's what I ended up using and it works well. It is very easy to adjust the fan speeds. My only gripe is that I don't want to have extra programs running all the time in the background. P.S. I had to drag the app into my login items in order to get it to actually start up on login.
Right now the settings I'm using are: 2500 rpm for the HDD fan and 2000 rpm for the other two fans. The computer is still quieter than any standard PC. This works so well, temperatures now range from 35 degrees at idle to 50 degrees with heavy use and the top of the computer is about body temperature now.
As you know the Raptor runs a little hotter than standard HDDs and the AL 24" iMac already tends to run on the hot side. TomSawyer has pointed out that heat stresses the components and they may fail sooner. I have had 2 Macs have HDDs fail within a year, which is not acceptable. Maybe because the computers ran too hot?
My 24" AL system reported 50-60 degrees on the Raptor drive (50 idle, 60 with heavy use) and the top of the computer felt at about the temperature that I like my coffee.
So I researched fan control options. There seem to be three solutions for controlling the fans:
a. Modify the system files AppleBlower.kext and AppleFan.kext, found in /System/Library/Extensions. Inside of these files are lists of numbers and temperatures which control when the fan goes on and off and how fast the fan ramps up when the CPU temperature increases. Apparently, nobody in these or other forums has yet given a complete explanation for what the numbers mean and how these files work, although some people seem to have gotten the rough idea through reverse engineering experiments. I messed around with this for a bit and when modifying the settings didn't seem to make a difference to my fan speeds, I gave up.
b. Download FanControl 1.1. This program modifies the system files mentioned above. It installs into your preference pane, which made it sound ideal. I tried it but it didn't work for my AL 24" iMac, perhaps because it was written for MacBooks which only have one fan.
c. Download smcFanControl 2.1.2. That's what I ended up using and it works well. It is very easy to adjust the fan speeds. My only gripe is that I don't want to have extra programs running all the time in the background. P.S. I had to drag the app into my login items in order to get it to actually start up on login.
Right now the settings I'm using are: 2500 rpm for the HDD fan and 2000 rpm for the other two fans. The computer is still quieter than any standard PC. This works so well, temperatures now range from 35 degrees at idle to 50 degrees with heavy use and the top of the computer is about body temperature now.
The numbers are probably related the PWM interval. I'm guessing the higher number means a wider "high" on the PWM waveform. Probably the number of nanoseconds it stays high
PWM is just a square wave with changes in the high and low parts.
______|''''|______|''''|______|''''|______
Would probably give a slow speed, whereas
__|'''''''''''''|__|'''''''''''''|__|'''''''''''''|__|'''''''''''''|__
would be faster.
That's just my thoughts though.
Congrats! glad another has taken the plunge and gone for the upgrade.
Yes, the air is a MUST. Eliminates you having to touch the bare screen with anything which is nice.So what HD did you end up going with? I'm trying to resist the temptation to be disappointed with my Seagate 7200.10; I was unaware that WD had come out with new drives using perpendicular technology and are outperforming the Seagates. Still a mighty fast drive without a doubt.