Upgrading HDD & RAM... Advice?

[billabong]

So I've decided to finally upgrade my ram and add another Hard Drive... Here is what I think I'm gonna get, any advice or experience with any of them?

Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 750GB SATA2 7200RPM 32MB Cache Hard Drive

and

Kingston KTA-MP667AK2/2G D2-667 2GB (1GBX2)

Does this sound like a good combo? Currently I have 2 x 512mb and 1 x 250GB, 1 x 500GB Hard drives...

I'm also wondering would it be a good idea to make the 750GB as my primary hard drive? Or is it best to keep with the original 250GB that came with the unit?

Thanks to anyone that can help me out.

 

[italiano40]

good choices, you should keep the 250 gb and install Linux on it

 

[netnothing]

Not sure how much that 750GB drive is, but Best Buy has an incredible deal this week on a Seagate 500GB drive for $99.99.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8294632&type=product&id=1172880157923

Maybe you can get 2 for the price of the 750GB?

-Kevin

 

[billabong]

Not sure how much that 750GB drive is, but Best Buy has an incredible deal this week on a Seagate 500GB drive for $99.99.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8294632&type=product&id=1172880157923

Maybe you can get 2 for the price of the 750GB?

-Kevin

I'm up in Canada, so I don't think bestbuy.ca has the same deal. Thanks though.

The 750GB is only $199 CDN that seems like a good deal to me as it's going for $269 on bestbuy.com ...

 

[billabong]

good choices, you should keep the 250 gb and install Linux on it

Haha, so is it better to make the 750GB my main disc?

 

[Sun Baked]

Likely the major difference in performance will be the cache size of the two drives.

Also reloading the OS on the new drive will serve as a form of defrag so the performance based on that alone will serve to make things faster until the OS refrags the drive.

---

But it all depends on how much data you have, and how you want to manage it.

Though keeping a complete OS on both drives will make life easier if an OS update ever causes major grief.

 

[billabong]

Likely the major difference in performance will be the cache size of the two drives.

Also reloading the OS on the new drive will serve as a form of defrag so the performance based on that alone will serve to make things faster until the OS refrags the drive.

---

But it all depends on how much data you have, and how you want to manage it.

Though keeping a complete OS on both drives will make life easier if an OS update ever causes major grief.

The Hitachi has 32mb cache, will that make a big difference with the existing Default drive in the MacPro?

 

[bigbird]

I'm up in Canada, so I don't think bestbuy.ca has the same deal. Thanks though.

The 750GB is only $199 CDN that seems like a good deal to me as it's going for $269 on bestbuy.com ...

Tigerdirect.ca has a 500GB Seagate SATA 300 16MB for $109.99

 

[Sun Baked]

The Hitachi has 32mb cache, will that make a big difference with the existing Default drive in the MacPro?

Yes, sort of.

For small file writes and actual cache read hits the 32MBs of cache is the only thing operating at SATA's max speed.

For everything else, it is the mechanical speed of the drive that'll be different. But through the Finder, the 1-5MB/s of speed advantage/disadvantage won't be too big.