Boot Drive: 7200 vs 10000

[Kevin Camp]

the velocirapter should excel as a boot drive and/or scratch disk (disk cache) based on the performance test i’ve seen.

the problem seems to be finding a place to put it… read the following from barefeats.com/hard103.html (you’d think i worked for this guy, but i don’t, honestly…):

TRICKY INSTALL
The biggest downside of the unusual drive design is the position of the data and power connectors. They don’t line up the same way as conventional SATA 3.5″ drives. That means you CAN’T just mount them on the Mac Pro’s factory sleds. Nor do they fit any existing external enclosure — even if you have a SATA host adapter with external ports that can boot OS X.

In our case, we decided to connect the Velociraptors to the two spare SATA ports hiding behind the CPU inlet fan. For power, we used an external supply but it occurred to us that there are two companies offering kits to mount drives securely in the lower, empty optical drive bay of the Mac Pro. The MaxConnect Optical Bay Disk Mounting Assembly from MaxUpgrades is designed to handle two drives, drawing power from the unused Molex connector already in the bay, and routing the data cables down to the two spare SATA ports referred to above.

If you only plan to install one Velociraptor, another optical bay mounting kit available is the Pro Caddy from Trans International. I understand they are working on Pro Caddy 2 with the dual Velociraptors specifically in mind — more on that when it’s released.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Laurie Pepper]

Holy moley! Okay. So, supposing I get some kind of way to install this drive. What I want is to run AE as fast as possible. So, boot drive or media drive?
At 750 gigs, theoretically, I could do both (as I do now, on my dual 2.5).

AND I noticed that elsewhere you mentioned using additional controller cards for additional sata II drives. Do I need an additional controller card? I’ve noticed that Sonet makes a four port for internal drives. With the usual temptation of “blinding speed.”

Thanks for all the info here on this type of stuff. L.

https://straightlife.info

[Laurie Pepper]

Found at the Apple board: install velociraptor using heatsink from:

https://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=Product.display&product_id=180

it costs 48$ and when I talked to the guy (local for me, California), he said “you’ll need a torx #8 (get it at home depot) to remove the black bracket from the velociraptor.

I still want to know, Kevin. Would I be wasting this drive as a boot drive, when I could be using it’s speed for rendering media?

https://straightlife.info

[Ron Lindeboom]

The guy wanting to sell this to you, Laurie, is going to tell you how easy it is. I recently ruined a Mac laptop because it was so “easy” to swap drives, DVD burners, etc. — and I have been building and updating machines for 20 years.

Unless you are really comfortable, I wouldn’t do it if I were you.

Get a dealer to do it.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

Remember: Burt Bacharach lied. What the world really needs now is an undo button.

[Laurie Pepper]

Oh, thanks Ron. I was going to get a tech guy I know to install it, but now you’ve got me scared. What I’ll do is wait and see what he thinks. And I definitely won’t try to use this drive as a boot drive. Thanks so much. Worst case, maybe I’ll send the drive back. Hate to.

https://straightlife.info

[Kevin Camp]

i don’t know if i’d try to change out the heat sink, it may effect the warranty but it does seem rather straight forward. since you have a tech-guy, you should run it by him to see what he thinks.

either of the optical bay drive mounting kits would be decent solutions. the maxpower kit is pricey ($129), but the pro caddy is only $39 (w/o the sata-to-ide adapter).

you might talk to your tech-guy to see how comfortable he would be running a sata cable from the velociraptor in the optical bay to one of the sata connections on the motherboard and routing power from the molex connector that is for the 2nd optical drive (there should be an adapter). i think i would rather have the velociraptor connected to the sata bus rather than the ide bus, but maybe it doesn’t make a difference… i’m not a tech-guy by trade (more by necessity) but he may have better input on that. plus, your not modifying the drive, so no warranty problems there.

to answer your other question, i think the speed of the velociraptor would be better used as a boot drive and disk cache for ae. the greater speed advantage it seems to have over the other sata drives is in random reads and writes which would be great for a boot/cache drive. also, ae really won’t take great advantage of a fast media drive, it’s just not a realtime app. (of course fcp would love it….).

all that being said,your 10k raptors are pretty fast boot drives too. so if you go the easy route and return the velociraptor, i don’t think you’ll be too disappointed with performance.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Rob Clay]

I would stay away from the IDE connections. IDE will be the weakest link in your data transfer.

Stick with SATA connections ONLY.

Also, I would avaoid messing with the heatsick also…youll at least need a lubricant between that connection and I also believe it will void your warrenty.

[Laurie Pepper]

thanks, all. I really appreciate the help. I’m going to return the velociraptor. It all seems too problematic. I’ll exchange it for something a little more practical. And I’ll 0 stripe the two 150’s for working on media (always backing everything up to another drive.) Thanks again. L.

https://straightlife.info

[Kevin Camp]

not that this will help laurie now, but for future readers… here is a review of the maxupgrade velociraptor mac pro drive bay install kit.

they mention that western digital now offers a velociraptor without the heat sink to make it easier to install with this kit and to not potentially effect the warranty by removing the original heat sink.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW