Opinion on WD Raptor 150GB 10K RPM

I would say that sounds like a good idea. I haven't heard too much about adding 3rd party drives to the Mac Pro yet, but they should be compatible.

You're still shipping the Mac Pro with a hard drive correct?

I would do some research first. SATA150 interface speed is half that of SATA300. I don't think a 10,000 RPM SATA150 drive is going to outperform a 7200 RPM SATA300 drive. Your G4 comparison is apples to oranges.

"I'm considering putting a Raptor 150GB 10K RPM HD in my upcoming Mac Pro"

I'm also considering it, but leaning to not doing so
because the Raptor is very loud.

PowerBook Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Actually, at this stage of hard drive specs, the bus speed has almost nothing to do with performance except when doing RAID striping.

The physical speed of the drive matters, and the success of the manufacturer in making a good performance drive.

For example,

A current model 7,200 rpm Seagate will give between 40-60 MB/s sustained read, depending on how far into the platter the drive head is.

A current model 10,000 rpm Raptor will give between 50-75 MB/s sustained read, again depending on how far into the disk the drive head is.

So, whether the bus speed is 1.5 Gb/s or 3.0 Gb/s (incorrectly labeled on the Apple Store as "3GB/s" - the convention is uppercase B for byte, lowercase b for bit), neither drive is capable of saturating it.

Unless you are doing a RAID setup, you can largely ignore the bus speed of the drive, it's more a marketing ploy than anything.

A Raptor makes a very good boot drive and for storing all your applications on before it has anything else on it. If you are going for optimal performance on your Mac Pro, one is certainly recommended.

The 10K Raptor 150GB is not going to be limited even if it was "only" 1.5Gbps - nor is it "no better" than other 7.2K drives. The "interface" only comes into effect with a Port Multiplier and putting multiple drives on one channel for the most part. 3G mode

It is true that Barefeats felt the Maxtor MLIII 300GB was a good alternative, more for sustained I/O and the 10K Raptor seems better suited to a dedicated OS/Apps boot drive. And really high capacity/density 500GB drives w/ 16MB cache are impressive. Storage Review Performance Comparison: Raptor v Hitachi v Caviar RE2 v MaxLine III

The new Raptor has NCQ, which Apple now supports, and it has 16MB cache.

Some people don't think Raptors are noisy while others do, obviously you will hear the drive during seeks. Any high performance drive has to make some noise and the difference is slight, 39-43dB, and it was the 500GB Hitachi which had the highest level.

From Barefeats:
If I had to get some real work done with this Mac Pro system, I'd ...boot from a Raptor 10K 150GB drive or favorite 7200RPM SATA 3G drive

SR review of the Raptor:

WD feels that electronics capable of negotiating at 300 MB/sec are sufficiently proven for its standard consumer-oriented drives, but not quite mature enough to mate with enterprise-class products. The firm indicates that this may change as the relevant ICs continue to develop.
For the most part, of course, a 150 MB/sec or 300 MB/sec figure simply represents a ceiling, a bandwidth figure that today's speediest drives, including this new Raptor, have yet to approach.


G4 MDD UL3D 4 x Atlas 10K/15K SoftAID 3 Mac OS X (10.4.7) iMac 20" Core Duo

exactly. I second that. the actual interphase is way faster than the drives speed, so a SATA 150 10k RPM drive will outperform a 7200 RPM 3.0 drive. as a matter of fact, a sata 3.0 and a sata 150 will perform practically the same if they are the same RPM's.

I would recommend getting 2 7200 RPM drives and RAIDING them. this will give better performance, and cost less than a Raptor. 250 GB drives can be had for 80 dollars. you could get 2 of these for 160 dollars and outperform a raptor. you could even get 4 of these, and stripe RAID all 4 of them, and you should get about 3 times the speed of the raptor. 4 drives times 80 dollars each is 320 dollars. the price of the raptor is 250. that means that for 70 dollars more, you can have over 6 times the storage (1 terabyte vs 150 gb) and about 3 times the performance

just my thoughts though. its what I'm gonna do to my mac pro. If you need a drive just for storage, get an eSATA external drive, and just plug it in to one of the 3 extra SATA connectors on the motherboard. It will give the same speed as an internal drive, but all your internal drives RAIDED together will offer awsome performance

LOL.

Yeah it would, it would kill it.

What's faster, a Lamborghini on a road with a 200 mph speed limit, or a Yugo on a road with a 300 mph speed limit?

Yeah, that's right, the Lamborghini. And it only hits 187 mph... it can't even hit the 200 mph limit!

The sustained data rate on the Hitachi 250 GB SATA 3.0 drive is 68 MB/s which would make it roughly equivalent at least on that measure.

I would recommend getting 2 7200 RPM drives and
RAIDING them. this will give better performance, and
cost less than a Raptor. 250 GB drives can be had
for 80 dollars. you could get 2 of these for 160
dollars and outperform a raptor.

What kind of raid are you talking about to get better performance ? software raid from OSX or hardware raid ?

Thanks

From Barefeats:

One Hitachi 7K500 drive = 46MB/sREAD (!!), 62MB/sWRITE
And as we update this at 7AM Pacific Time, we're running tests on
FOUR Raptor 10K 150GB drives:

Four Raptors RAID 0 = 297MB/s READ, 286MB/s WRITE

G4 MDD UL3D 4 x Atlas 10K/15K SoftAID 3 Mac OS X (10.4.7) iMac 20" Core Duo

That's an unfair comparison!! You need to compare like to like setups…

Four Hitachi 7K500s RAID 0 = 243MB/s READ, 245MB/s WRITE
Four MaXLine RAID 0 = 271MB/s READ, 262MB/s WRITE
Four Raptors RAID 0 = 297MB/s READ, 286MB/s WRITE

Tell you what… from that the Maxtor MaXLine III looks to be a rather sweet deal!!

To any1...

So... striping 2 Raptors as a Raid 0 in my new MP would yield twice as fast results as just booting from 1 drive?

TIA?

The devil is in the details, and most "tests" are just measuring synthetic measures, a good way of comparing sometimes. Real world test measurements for Photoshop operations exist and are helpful in optimizing drive performance and setup.

The 10K Raptor makes an excellent choice for boot drive. Mac OS with lots of

It would not be 2x faster than just one Raptor.

"Twice as fast results."
Booting? editing in photoshop? launching applications?

If you used one Raptor as a dedicated boot OS/Apps drive, and used the 2nd for a dedicated /Users home directory, that would spread the load over two drives and might offer an equally fast system. (I've used that setup for yrs even when I had a 15K boot drive, and never had trouble, in fact I think it is the least trouble and easiest to maintain system setup).

I used a 15K boot drive, and of course just had to see what a stripped RAID would do. Sometimes it is faster, but so, too there were times when it wasn't. But it sure sounded like it was working hard! 😉

OK...
I understand it won't be twice as fast.
I guess my question is...
if I stripe 2 Raptors in DU.. and install OSX on it... then my OS is split across the 2 Raptors? Nah.. that doesn't sound correct.
What would be the best way to have 2 Raptors striped as a boot volume.
I'm thinking that I'm not too concerned about drive failure since they have 5 yr warranties...AND I will be running TM when Leopard comes out (manual backups for now).

Or would it be faster/better to do it like you said..

"one Raptor as a dedicated boot OS/Apps drive, and used the 2nd for a dedicated /Users home directory, that would spread the load over two drives and might offer an equally fast system."
Equally fast to what?




12 PB Mac OS X (10.4.7)