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macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 17, 2008
1,270
124
Philadelphia
Hey Guys,

I recently popped in a FirmTek 1S2 PCI SATA card into my MDD. I hooked up a 500GB laptop SATA drive. I am not seeing really much performance boost though. Same 61.2 Xbench ratings!

Any ideas?
 
What's the spindle speed on that hard drive? What size is the cache? Depending on those factors, the increase in performance you see could very well be negligible.
 
What's the spindle speed on that hard drive? What size is the cache? Depending on those factors, the increase in performance you see could very well be negligible.

Well, I did go from a 7200RPM to a 5400RPM. And I believe there is 8MB cache.
 
So the new drive is a 5400RPM drive? Then that's almost certainly your problem. An 8MB cache is good, but it won't help much since a 5400RPM drive definitely isn't performance oriented.
 
Sata won't make much difference unless your using really fast drives :/ IMO its only worth doing if you need the bigger storage space..
 
So let me get this straight....... you put a laptop drive in an MDD ? And you expected a performance increase.....

P u h l e e z e.........

thats like putting a motocycle engine in your ferrari and expecting it to go faster because of the reduced weight :) :)

back when I had a smufbox, I put in an SATA card & a 10k Raptor. It was like getting a brand new machine for quite a while....
 
Thanks for the help guys. I do have a WD Caviar (legacy) desktop SATA drive with the same specs. Should I clone over and give it a try?

I might have to just wait till these prices go down and go for a VelociRaptor or WD Black.
 
Hey Guys,

I recently popped in a FirmTek 1S2 PCI SATA card into my MDD. I hooked up a 500GB laptop SATA drive. I am not seeing really much performance boost though. Same 61.2 Xbench ratings!

Any ideas?

No surprise there. The OEM 5400 RMP drive in my MBP i7 quad is not nearly as fast as the full size 7200 RMP drive in my MDD (even before upgrading it to a Black drive).
 
You'll like the card when you get a better drive for it, though. One of the great things about the MDD is the amount of storage that you can have internally.
 
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