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Make my MDD Dual 1.42 Mac faster?

gotohamish

gotohamish

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 15, 2001
1,078
10
BKLN
Hi

I'm waiting on a PM Dual 1.42 and obviously want it to be the fastest it can possibly be. So, what I need to know is, what do I do.

I'm filling it with RAM, so no problem there, but I was thinking.

What is the cache on the 120GB drive? If it's the standard 2MB, would I really see a better performance from an 8MB Maxtor or Western Digital drive?

What about other aspects? I want to squeeze every bit out of my investment right from the start, or it's not worth it!
 
you could get an XServe Raid with 2.52 TB of space. More space than you'll use, and a write speed of over 200 MB/sec. Umm, what else...which video card do you have? If you paired a 9700 pro up to a 640x480 monitor you'd get a few hundred thousand fps, although the quality might suck ;). More ram, faster hdd's, better video card and you'll be set!
 
Originally posted by yzeater
you could get an XServe Raid with 2.52 TB of space. More space than you'll use, and a write speed of over 200 MB/sec. Umm, what else...which video card do you have? If you paired a 9700 pro up to a 640x480 monitor you'd get a few hundred thousand fps, although the quality might suck ;). More ram, faster hdd's, better video card and you'll be set!
Click to expand...

I actually went for the GeForce4MX because I'm not much of a gamer at all. Would the standard ATI 9000 have been better for all round performance? I figured for the money I saved lowering to the GF4MX I could buy almost 1GB more RAM, which I think would make more impact.
 
Stay away from Western Digital

whatever you do DO NOT BUY a western digital drive. They are even more noisy than a MDD G4. And they don't last very long. Also the extra cache makes no perceivable difference in the day to day speed of your mac.
 
Re: Stay away from Western Digital

Originally posted by zoetropeuk
whatever you do DO NOT BUY a western digital drive. They are even more noisy than a MDD G4. And they don't last very long. Also the extra cache makes no perceivable difference in the day to day speed of your mac.
Click to expand...

What!? Wester digital drives are the best Hard drives money can buy (and they come with 3 yr waranties) And they are good about replacing Hard drives under waranty(I know because my friends 30gig WD Hard drive went out on him after like 2 years + and they sent him a new one very quickly)
As for the 8MB cache...no real-world difference save your money...Buy a 7200 rpm 120gig WD or something like that.

As for the Loudness..I use my 120gig 5400 rpm WD drive in my recently purcased G4 Cube. No noise problem. This guy really dosent know what he is talking about.

-Xerov
 
I bought a Que!Fire external for backup last year. It housed a WD drive that failed one week in, as I was copying all my data to the external and wiping out the internal for a clean start. I saved about $200 on the drive and then spent $1000 to get my data back, via Drive Savers. Thanks god for those guys!

www.drivesavers.com

Dan
 
Re: Re: Stay away from Western Digital

Originally posted by Xerov


What!? Wester digital drives are the best Hard drives money can buy (and they come with 3 yr waranties) And they are good about replacing Hard drives under waranty(I know because my friends 30gig WD Hard drive went out on him after like 2 years + and they sent him a new one very quickly)
As for the 8MB cache...no real-world difference save your money...Buy a 7200 rpm 120gig WD or something like that.

As for the Loudness..I use my 120gig 5400 rpm WD drive in my recently purcased G4 Cube. No noise problem. This guy really dosent know what he is talking about.

-Xerov
Click to expand...

I've actually used a 120GB WD Caviar HDD for about a year now and it's great. No problems. It's Maxtor's drives I hear a lot about, and not good things either!

Interesting about the cache not making a difference though - why do they have larger ones if they don't make a difference?
 
The 8MB cache on those drives makes a BIG difference to those of us who record multitrack audio. I'm running the beta version of Pro Tools LE that allows me to have 32 tracks of audio, but my previous 7200 RPM hard drive couldn't read and write fast enough to support all 32 tracks and would just quit playing after a second or two. I bought one of those WD drives with the 8MB cache, and it gives me 32 tracks without ever stopping or choking.

As far as less demanding work, I suppose maybe there is no noticeable difference. I really don't know, because I only use the drive for my media data, not for applications or booting up to.
 
Who makes the best hard drives? I have been looking at buying an 80-120 gig one at 7200rpm but i cannot decide between the seagate and western digital. I am leaning towards the segates as i have used them and they seem pretty good and they are not expensive. How loud are the western digital drives compared to the standard seagates that apple uses?
 
Go with WD...It may be a little bit more expensive but its worth it and if my memory serves me correctly the Segate only comes with a 1 yr waranty...whereas the WD comes with 3yrs.

As for the sound issue ill say again I use a WD 120gig HD in my G4 cube (A machine known for its quiteness) and It makes no more noise than the origional 20gig that came with it.
 
Originally posted by Xerov
As for the sound issue ill say again I use a WD 120gig HD in my G4 cube (A machine known for its quiteness) and It makes no more noise than the origional 20gig that came with it.
Click to expand...

But thats a 5400 RPM drive... anyone who does anything but email on the computer needs a 7200 RPM drive. If you want any kind of performance, you have to get 7200.
 
Re: Re: Stay away from Western Digital

Originally posted by Xerov


What!? Wester digital drives are the best Hard drives money can buy (and they come with 3 yr waranties) And they are good about replacing Hard drives under waranty(I know because my friends 30gig WD Hard drive went out on him after like 2 years + and they sent him a new one very quickly)
As for the 8MB cache...no real-world difference save your money...Buy a 7200 rpm 120gig WD or something like that.

-Xerov
Click to expand...

*ahem*

Only the Western Digitals with 8MB of cache (the SE disks) have 3 year warranties, most of the rest of them on the market have 1 year warranties.
 
Originally posted by crazzyeddie


But thats a 5400 RPM drive... anyone who does anything but email on the computer needs a 7200 RPM drive. If you want any kind of performance, you have to get 7200.
Click to expand...

I know people doing heavy realtime experimental music performances on Tibooks with 4200 RPM drives... and they perform just fine.
 
western digital drives

i installed a 180gb drive in my MDD dual 1ghz... and its perfect. The drive is not making any more noise than the MDD. the computer sounds exactly the same as it did before i installed the drive. had it in there for 3 months so far. no complaints.

richard
 
One of the lucky ones

i installed a 180gb drive in my MDD dual 1ghz... and its perfect. The drive is not making any more noise than the MDD. the computer sounds exactly the same as it did before i installed the drive. had it in there for 3 months so far. no complaints.
Click to expand...

Go to the users forum on the WD website and look at the problems other people are having with these drives. Obviously they're not all faulty but there is a reason that they've reduced the warranty on the new SE drives from 3 years to 1 year.
If you want to take the risk of losing your data on a WD drive then that's up to you. Seagate drives are a lot more reliable and they are more quiet.
 
Re: Re: Re: Stay away from Western Digital

Originally posted by gotohamish


I've actually used a 120GB WD Caviar HDD for about a year now and it's great. No problems. It's Maxtor's drives I hear a lot about, and not good things either!

Interesting about the cache not making a difference though - why do they have larger ones if they don't make a difference?
Click to expand...

I use ONLY Maxtor drives and have no problems at all..............:)
 
Why not an IBM? alot of the older macs used them and they have so far had no problems.

I have IBM drives and seagate drives. i find that the IBM is a little quicker with the same GB and cache.

take your pick. i have since moved all of the IBMs to my mac and put the seagates in the pc.

good luck.

ps. i know IBM outsource their HDD manufacturing.
 
Re: Stay away from Western Digital

Originally posted by zoetropeuk
whatever you do DO NOT BUY a western digital drive. They are even more noisy than a MDD G4. And they don't last very long. Also the extra cache makes no perceivable difference in the day to day speed of your mac.
Click to expand...

I have the Western Digital 120 GB JB (8 Meg Cache) and have been using it for a while and this thing rocks. Here is the Xbench of the disk:

Disk Test 109.48
Sequential 112.61
Uncached Write 114.42 49.92 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 117.49 47.80 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 111.36 17.54 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 107.66 46.44 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 106.52
Uncached Write 102.11 1.54 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 109.87 25.20 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 103.16 0.67 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 111.58 21.87 MB/sec [256K blocks]

My machine is QuickSilver 2002 with a Single PL 1.2Ghz upgrade,768MB of cl2 RAM,ATI 7500 32MB. Oh and this drive is very quiet.

ooartist
 
Your drive definitely seems faster than mine. I got 84.04 for both disk tests using an 80gb 8mb cache drive on a dual 867MDD.
I took it back and exchanged it so I can't run another test to see if the first set of results were accurate or not.:confused:
 
Re: Re: Stay away from Western Digital

Originally posted by ooartist


I have the Western Digital 120 GB JB (8 Meg Cache) and have been using it for a while and this thing rocks. Here is the Xbench of the disk:

Disk Test 109.48
Sequential 112.61
Uncached Write 114.42 49.92 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 117.49 47.80 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 111.36 17.54 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 107.66 46.44 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 106.52
Uncached Write 102.11 1.54 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 109.87 25.20 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 103.16 0.67 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 111.58 21.87 MB/sec [256K blocks]

My machine is QuickSilver 2002 with a Single PL 1.2Ghz upgrade,768MB of cl2 RAM,ATI 7500 32MB. Oh and this drive is very quiet.

ooartist
Click to expand...

This is twice what I currently get on my stock Apple/Seagate OEM 27GB in my G4-500, but a quick look on the xBench site shows that this is actually only slightly faster than the stock 80GB that ships in the FW800 Dual 1.25s. But still, it's faster! :D
 
Whatever brand harddrive you buy, check the individual box for the warranty length.

A lot of IDE drives have their warranty down to one year no matter whom the manufacturer is.

The special edition drives (like some of the 8MB cache ones) still have a 3 year warranty.

And when I say check the box, I mean the actual box you're buying. Some storees may have mixed stock where some drives have a 1 year and some have a 3 year warranty of the same brand/model drive.

The shorter drive warranties is almost enough to make you pay Apple the premium for additional hardrives when you buy the system since they'll be covered under the Applecare (if you buy it of course).
 
Originally posted by Bear
Whatever brand harddrive you buy, check the individual box for the warranty length.

A lot of IDE drives have their warranty down to one year no matter whom the manufacturer is.
Click to expand...
Maxtor still carries a couple lines of ATA drives with the 3 yr warranty, though they are not generally retail lines. And you may need to go somewhere besides a CompUSA to buy them.

Other companies may offer similar products in their enterprise-class lines.
 
Seagate = Slowest, longest life and the most silent.

WD = Fastes, middle life and makes alot of noise.

IBM = Middle fast, shortest life and middle noise.
 
I dont think you guys follow the tech industry much... Seagate was bought by Maxtor about a year or two ago... so anything you buy branded Maxtor or Seagate is basically the same, with the exception of labeling.

Anyone comparing a laptop to a desktop drive: Unless you are comparing them on the same machine it doesnt matter. The laptop drives have smaller platters, so the drive head reads at closer intervals (the data is more compact, physicaly), and therefore the RPM speed isnt as important.
 
I have a Maxtor 80Gb drive and it works great for me. But I've found that I'm in the Minority. I've heard a lot of good things about those WD ones so check them out.

P-Worm
 
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