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

Is the WD6400AAKS still the boot drive to go for?

edesignuk

edesignuk

Moderator emeritus
Original poster
Mar 25, 2002
19,232
2
London, England
In reading around it seems many favour the Western Digital Caviar Blue 640GB [WD6400AAKS] as being the best speed/value boot drive, is this still the case do you think? I know the Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB [HD103UJ] is up there too.

The WD can be had for ~£55 vs the Samsung's ~£90, both will have a massive amount of redundant space (only using ~25GB of current boot drive), so on the face of it the cheaper and smaller WD seems the obvious choice...unless I'm missing something?

For reference:
1st drive - 320GB stock drive - Boot/Apps [the one I'm looking to replace]
2nd drive - 750GB Samsung Spinpoint F1 - Home folder
3rd drive - Another 750GB Samsung Spinpoint, a backup of the 2nd drive
 
I got the WD as my boot drive but it has been making this really annoying high pitched noise, which some people said is a "seek noise", and if that is the case I would recommend against it. However, I ran the hardware test and it found that my drive is defective, so now I have to ship it back to OWC and get a replacement.

I already wiped the drive clean once and reinstalled everything and looks like I will have to do it again (Logic is a bitch to install 7 hours, again). I also have 3 F1 spinpoints in there along with it which seem to be doing fine. I suppose I just got unlucky with a bum drive.
 
^ Seeing as it's defective I don't think I can take your experience too much to heart in making a decision ;) but thanks anyway :)

Can't you CCC/SuperDuper your boot drive to one of your Samsung's, then clone it back when your replacement WD arrives to save yourself having to keep reinstalling everything? That's what I'd do.
 
I was going to do that, I wanted to ask what you think I should do but I didn't want to hijack your thread :)

I don't know, there is something about peace of mind to me by doing a clean reinstall, but if it really makes no difference I might as well. I don't mind the OS install but Logic is insanely long...

And I am still getting a 640 from owc as the replacement, I am not giving up on it yet.
 
I have a WD 640 in my Mac Pro as boot drive, It's very quiet as I have to put my ear into the open case to hear any noise coming from it. Speed wise it feels about as fast as the Spinpoint T166 (500GB) it replaced. Perhaps slightly faster, but not much.
 
Ok quick question, I copied everything from my boot drive over to one of the samsungs. Is there anything I have to do to be able to boot from that drive once I take out the 640?
 
big dainjerus said:
Ok quick question, I copied everything from my boot drive over to one of the samsungs. Is there anything I have to do to be able to boot from that drive once I take out the 640?
Click to expand...
So long as by "copy" you mean you used CCC/SuperDuper, all you have to do is set the new drive as your Start up disk and you're set.
 
I replaced my Raptor (160G/10K) with one of these. It's way quieter and a little quicker, most noticably on startup. I've had no problems with it (about a month).

I just used disk utility to copy it over.
 
^ Just the kind of thing I was hoping to hear, thanks :)

Any other thoughts still welcome.



Glad it worked for you big dainjerus.
 
I very much like my 3xWD640, which i RAID0. they are quiet and cool. i ordered them from OWC along with 8gig of ram and had no problems.

i was using 1 WD640 as a boot drive, but decided that i should use the 320 that came with the MP. so made the 320 my boot drive and put the 3 640s in RAID0.

I have heard some good things about the Sammy 750s also, but have heard some bad things as well. Check out the comment from Newegg.com on the Sammys. They are very fast drives though.
 
I just received one of the new 1Tb Caviar Black drives today - it's the first WD drive with a 32Mb cache. I'll format it overnight and then run some benchmarks tomorrow against my Raptors and RE2s.
 
OddThomas said:
I very much like my 3xWD640, which i RAID0. they are quiet and cool. i ordered them from OWC along with 8gig of ram and had no problems.

i was using 1 WD640 as a boot drive, but decided that i should use the 320 that came with the MP. so made the 320 my boot drive and put the 3 640s in RAID0.

I have heard some good things about the Sammy 750s also, but have heard some bad things as well. Check out the comment from Newegg.com on the Sammys. They are very fast drives though.
Click to expand...

Do you hear a "seek noise" with your 640? Like a beep kind of sound. I know mine was defective, but I am not sure if the beeps were just the noise of the drive (I am pretty sure the scratches weren't). I am thinking about getting another f1 or something else instead, but I know it might be wasting space. I have my apps on one of my sammys and things are running beautifully now.

It is funny how if you have a drive fail on you, you really don't want to go back to it.
 
I love my new wd640, very fast and quiet. No noise at all.
It runs about 10 degrees cooler than my stock 320. Should be very reliable as the 640 only uses two 320GB platers.

From my iPod touch at starbucks in palo alto ca.
 
I have a mac pro with 4xWD6400AAKS and 1xSeagate 7200.11 750.

The speed difference between them is negligible. I have used the drives in and out of RAID. (I even booted from a 4xWD640 Stripe for a while)

Noise: VERY little. The WD is quieter than the Seagate. The 7200.11 makes a strange clicking noise that I hate when the drive disengages. It is (according to forums and seagate) known functionality and does not signifiy an issue. I still don't like it and it sounds (literally) like an issue!

The WD RAID was fast but the compatibility of RAID and boot camp is non-existent. XP would take 5-10 minutes to boot because of all the 'Unrecognized Disk Partitions). I was triple booting Ubuntu/XP/Vista though.

Bottom Line (IMO):
The WD are solid drives. It performs well as a boot drive but it's not as fast as a raptor. If I did it again .. I would do 1x150 Raptor (or 300 when they come out) and fill the other slots with the WD640s.

Having a large boot drive is a problem waiting to happen (in my use patterns). I just flood the drive with crap that doesn't belong on it. I prefer having individual drives for data, media, etc. or at least partitions. With this much disk space, it shouldn't be an ordeal every time you want to back up or restore, but bad organization will quickly change that.

My .02, if you need more info just ask.
 
i agree with mgsarch, a larger boot drive can be problematic.

I have the 640GB as a main drive my OS, its sufficient, but im considering moving down to the 150GB raptor for primary OS and just the 640 as a clone/bootable back drive. as for the efficiency and reliability it has it wuold be n excellent sufficient backup drive.

a raid set up might benefit from the 640s, but over all it is a great drive no doubt about it.

It just depends on if you really want all that space for your main drive when it might be beneficial to have it separated, as thats the problem i have it as my main drive and ive gotten into the habit of keeping everything on there instead of routinely putting it on a secondary drive.

but youll find WDs are reliable solid drives, i have a few older drives to alot of the newer ones, I really recommend any of the drives from AAKS series.
Seagate, im not partial too but the drives that originally came with my macpro were seagates and theyre pretty good.
 
Trying to understand down side of RAID

Hate to hijack the thread.. Just trying to get my head around the Bootcamp/RAID incompatibility issue. I'd like to run 5 sata drives: a 250 (original) in the second optical bay for XP and a RAID 5 array of 4x Samsung 500gb Spinpoints (presently own 3) for OS X and media files.

I'm hoping that when I reboot and hold option, the OS will see two boot options, and then once I boot into XP, Windows won't see the RAID, which isn't an issue for me. Assuming a RAID card, this should work? And perform well?

Thanks.
 
nightfly13 said:
Hate to hijack the thread.. Just trying to get my head around the Bootcamp/RAID incompatibility issue. I'd like to run 5 sata drives: a 250 (original) in the second optical bay for XP and a RAID 5 array of 4x Samsung 500gb Spinpoints (presently own 3) for OS X and media files.

I'm hoping that when I reboot and hold option, the OS will see two boot options, and then once I boot into XP, Windows won't see the RAID, which isn't an issue for me. Assuming a RAID card, this should work? And perform well?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

might want to do a little research on "Bypass RAID" in apple forums, theres alot of it discussed @ the discussions.apple.com threads.
As im not 100% but it seems that there is no bootloader for XP to load up the RAID card so it may or may not be seen and once in XP that wll be the main start-up drive as it wont detec the raid in BC ControlPanel.

You may want to try an eSata bracket plugged into the ODD Sata port and run XP through there, some say it might have a small fix to it to notice the entire set up but i havent run anything like that myself.
 
Many months have passed but I've finally got around to ordering the WD6400AAKS (£53 from dabs.com, bargain!). Should be here in a couple of days, looking forward to having it replace the crappy 320GB stock drive.

I'll be using the spare 320GB stock drive to sit my Fusion VM's on.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
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