Mac Pro :: Best Speed Bang For Buck: RAM Vs RAID
Mar 21, 2010
have MROOGLED and searched forums but haven't found a quick and dirty answer to this...
What's the best bang-for-buck upgrade of these?
1) Software Raid 0 ?
(Free, but might actually slow some tasks due to adding a workload to the processor?)
2) Add RAM ?
($150 to bump from 3GB DDR3 to 6GB, $300 to bump to 10 GB)
3) Hardware RAID 0 ?
($800 for the apple controller - yikes! )
I read Lloyd Chambers recs for optimizing photoshop, and while very helpful, it seems overkill for a weekend warrior , non professional like me.
Using the base 2009 Mac Pro with standard 3GB of DDR3 primarily for
1) medium photoshopping with file sizes up to 200 - 400 MB
2) importing / smoothing / editing movies in iMovie and possibly FCE from HDV tapes and a Flip
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Jul 21, 2009
Bang for buck wise which has a better speed to price ratio? I'm not talking about benchmarks, I'm talking about noticeable performance. I heard some people say that 5400 drives are so fast nowadays that even 7200 drives can sometimes be slower. Is this true?
Also, if it's a 7200 drive, is it cheaper to BTO straight from Apple the 7200 drive? Rather than buy aftermarket? (bearing in mind that I don't need the space of the two drives, so if I buy aftermarket the old drive will end up being unused )
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May 10, 2010
I recently bought the new 13" MBP and have been looking at upgrades. I bought it standard so I could walk out with it that day, but I've been thinking about two main changes: RAM and a SSD hard drive. I'm pretty sure I'll be getting the Intel X25-M 160gb SSD, it looks like the best GB per $ ($424 for 160GB). I know that will show great results. Is a RAM upgrade also necessary for improved speed and performance? If so what is the best RAM to change to? I'm looking at either getting 1 4GB card for a total of 6GB or getting the pair for 8GB. I don't want to drop $300+ if it isn't going to do much for me.
I mostly use the MBP for word processing, internet, email, etc.; but I want a bit snappier and quicker performance than what I'm getting out of stock. It is possible (likely) I will get into music making/mixing on this machine.
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Jul 30, 2009
I'm really liking the thought of having an SSD drive in my new 13" MBP but I don't have a clue as to which one I should choose.
my budget is somewhere in the 250-ish range. so I'm hoping some of you pros can suggest something good in that price range.
I see alot of them are SATA II. can our MBPs use these or do I need to stick with just the regular SATA drives?
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Nov 5, 2010
The title says it all - getting a 2.4Ghz 13" MBP, 4GB Ram (rarely if ever need more), and thinking of a little boost somewhere over the 500GB 5400RPM drive. $300 for a 128GB SSD is pretty high, especially considering I'll probably max that out far too quickly. Is there any bigger bang for the buck performance upgrade over the Momentus XT?
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Oct 6, 2010
I got two questions.
1) What would you guys say the best bang for your buck FireWire 800 is? I hear a lot of differing opinions on this one, so I'd like a couple suggestions, need over 500GB though. 750GB and up would probably be the best.
2) I've got 2 PATA hard-drives from my old Windows PC that crashed, what would you guys suggest doing about getting the data off of them? Most of the hard drive kits I found are for SATA, and the one I found for PATA was like $50 at Best Buy, I just want to get the data off these hard drives and junk 'em. I don't need bells and whistles and fancy enclosures.
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Jan 28, 2008
ive put 4 of the hitachi 1tbs in my new mac pro.. and i really want to do Raid on them eventually.. and buy the pricey apple raid card.. i'll do it.. but speed wise:
How fast is a Sata connection straight from HD>Motherboard... ~75mb/s?
Is the Raid 5 config with all those drives much faster... around ~110mb/s?
Do you know if there is anyway to get a 5th drive into the raid 5 array? using the ODD space.. or some externals too... i need as much as space as possible...
And boot camp wont work with raid card anymore? I was thinking to have the startup disc be a raptor to increase speed on the apps, how would it integrate with the raid card, etc
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May 30, 2008
have a speed comparison between a RAID 0, 1, 5, and possibly a 01 on the new Mac Pro. I found a few reviews from other manufacturers, but I was interested in how read / write speeds for the Mac Pro and the Apple RAID card stack up. I'm particularly interested in how much slower a RAID 5 is then a RAID 0.
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Aug 3, 2009
I got my Intel Gen2 SSD's over the weekend, and have installed them in Raid 0 using icy dock converters, I cloned my OS onto there from my caviar black raid 0, so I want to run some sort of throughput test to compare the two, not application specific as I don't do any of the CS4, video stuff, just plain old read and write tests
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Mar 18, 2009
I'm quite new to the OS (Level) Raid concept provided by the Disk Utility within Leopard OS X 10.5.6 and other OS X OS's, but I saw a great video showing 2 USB External HD's hooked up to a macbook running a raid to tie them together (striped or mirrored). This concept is simple! But heres my situation:I have an iMac 22" 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, Running off of a "298.1 GB WDC WD3200AAJS-40VWA0 Media Hard Drive". I also have an External Drive "465.8 GB WD 5000AAV External Media".
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Aug 19, 2010
Will the speed be comparable between a RAID setup that uses 2 x 1TB 64MB cache Blacks, vs 1 SSD (Intel X25-M for example)? Will the difference be noticeable at all (during application launches etc). I would like to know soon because I just ordered the 2 Blacks
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May 16, 2007
I have a PowerMac G5 and need to purchase an internal RAID card to create a RAID 1 mirror of the system drive... one that will allow me create a Hardware RAID 1 mirror, not software RAID through OS X.
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Dec 2, 2009
I just bought a Guardian Maximus RAID1 kit and I have two 1TB drives in it. I'm using it over Airport Extreme as an airdisk (mac osx 10.6.2)
My question is simply: am I running a risk by partitioning it into two partitions? Should I ever have to rebuild the failed disk (which I understand is really simple with the Guardian Maximus) - will it have trouble doing two partitions? I'm using one 500gb partition for time machine and one 500gb partition as redundant itunes/media.
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Jan 28, 2009
I have a Lacie ext hard drive with 2 x 250gb HD that were one RAIDed into a single 500gb HD. I ran this update Lacie firmware update: http://www.lacie.com/support/drivers...r.htm?id=10053 And now my HD will only show up as two separate HDs of 250gb instead of a single RAID HD of 500gb.
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May 1, 2008
I have a macpro with 4 x 1tb drives
Is it possible to get a highpoint raid controller and put those 4 drives in a raid 5 array (and then create partitions inside that array) - or do you need to have 1 drive by itself for the operating system, and then create a raid array using the remaining 3 drives?
Lastly, are the highpoint 3500 series a decent card? and fully compatible?
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May 20, 2009
I have a new Mac Pro Quad 2.93 with the Mac RAID card installed with four 1TB drives setup in a RAID 5 array. When creating the volumes in the RAID utility, you can not edit them, resize, etc. If one large volume is created in the RAID utility, you can then partition that one volume using the Apple Disk Utility, which then allows you to resize if needed.
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Sep 13, 2009
I'm using the software RAID right now. Everything is set as RAID 10. I want to move to a RAID card� if I keep it as RAID 10 will I still need to redo everything?
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Nov 16, 2009
I have a RAID 0 set up with two 1.5TB HDs. I am doing some reorganizing and want to take all the data on the RAID 0 and move it to one of the hard drives in the RAID 0 and create to single drives. Is there any way of moving all the data from a RAID 0 onto one of the HDs?
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Apr 20, 2010
I am planning on getting a 2010 MP when they come and have a question about it. I am 90% sure that with my budget, I will not be able to after a RAID card. I am wondering if software RAID would be alright or if it's so bad it's not worth doing. Also, there is small chance that I could buy a RAID card later on, how would I install it? I will be using it for 3D animation with Maya and some zbrush modeling. Also I will be doing some Photoshop and illustrator and maybe some gaming on win 7 boot camp. Feel free to list any other pros and cons about either a software RAID or hardware RAID, I wana make sure I have all the details before making a final decision on it.
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May 15, 2009
I have never setup RAID before and this question may be totally stupid for that matter.
Can I setup RAID 1 (or call it mirroring) without the RAID card? I have two 1TB internal drives in my Mac Pro and I want to mirror them. I don't want to spend another 700 bucks just to setup a mirror.
Disk Utility shows some RAID options, but I am not sure how to use them, or if they will work at all without the RAID card.
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Feb 14, 2010
On my 2009 Mac Pro, OS X's disk utility seems to allow the provision of making a mirror RAID or a stripe RAID.
Is it possible to shove in 2 drives, make a RAID 0 for two of them, and then add in 2 more drives to make a RAID 1 out of that RAID 0? (a RAID 0+1?)
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Apr 30, 2009
Sorry for the title but I couldn't think of anything better. Hopefully I'll be able to explain my problem. I have a MPR 2.53 ghz, 4 gig ram, I'm using Safari 4.04. I am using the WIFI at a guesthouse in Thailand (but I had the same issue in China, Vietnam ...). I ran a speed test and it said download 7mb/sec and upload about 1mb/sec. I have an "app" that says bandwidth in 1.3kb/sec out 1.0kbs. I thought maybe it was Safari so I downloaded and installed Firefox. firefox gives me similar speeds. When I downloaded Firefox though I had a download speed of over 1mb/sec. But as soon as it finished downloading the speed went back to around 1kb/sec. I have rebooted my MBP many times. I did some Google searches but didn't find anything helpful.
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Dec 20, 2007
I am interested in adding a webcam to my desktop Imac (power pc)- Isight is no longer available- an option that I found is the Ecamm Image- but apparently it is USB and not firewire and it will only run with high speed usb- how do I know which type is on my computer? I checked system profiler but quite frankly wasn't sure of the designations.. does anyone have any experience with this camera, by the way? is USB 2.0 by definition "High Speed"?
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Apr 10, 2009
I have a WDS local network at my house. I use a Airport Extreme in my main part of the house and a Airport Express for my back part of the house i.e. the backyard. Now every two weeks or so my internet speed through my Airport Express slows down about half the speed but when I am connected trough the Airport Extreme my speed is normal. I know this because I test my connection very often. Now when I want the Airport Express to get back up to speed I have to unplug, and plug it back in. Then after awhile it starts to slow down again in a time period of two weeks or so.
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Jan 7, 2010
I have a MPR 2.53 ghz, 4 gig ram, I'm using Safari 4.04. I am using the WIFI at a guesthouse in Thailand (but I had the same issue in China, Vietnam ...).
I ran a speed test and it said download 7mb/sec and upload about 1mb/sec. I have an "app" that says bandwidth in 1.3kb/sec out 1.0kbs. I thought maybe it was Safari so I downloaded and installed Firefox. firefox gives me similar speeds. When I downloaded Firefox though I had a download speed of over 1mb/sec. But as soon as it finished downloading the speed went back to around 1kb/sec. I have rebooted my MBP many times. I did some Google searches but didn't find anything helpful.
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Mar 4, 2010
Have an Extreme base stations and express repeater connected to my DSL services. On my primary iMac connected via ethernet I get 5.25MBps speed. The speed on this computer is always constant. On the remote MacPro I get anywhere from 1.5MBps to 5MPps speed within a half hour of testing.
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May 21, 2010
I'm using Data Rescue III on a USB powered hard drive with and it's taking a very long time with my iMac G5... It says 42,291 hours remaining (about 5 years) If I did it on my Mac Pro would it go faster, or is the recovery speed based on the hard drive speed?
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Apr 12, 2009
i have a 1.5 Mbps AT&T DSL connection, and multiple speed tests show a download speed of 1.2 Mbps (and 200 Kbps upload). when i download files, such as software updates from Apple, various podcasts, and even Silverlight from Microshaft, the speed is always between 140 - 160 Kbps. i contacted AT&T, and the rep said it was because of buffering by the servers i was receiving the files from. is this a reasonable explanation? is this an accurate use of the term "buffering"?
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Aug 26, 2009
Last night my fan kicked into high gear all of a sudden. I shut it down overnight and when booting up this AM I find it still running on high...quire noisy, of course. Is there something overheating? How to make it run at normal speed?
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Jan 7, 2010
I generally get about 700kbs download speed, which is what my ISP (Sky uk) tells me I SHOULD have, but they also tell me that my router upload speed should be similar and it's not anywhere close to it.
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