[Veltliner]

Tomorrow's the day to order the 24" iMac with matte display.

And I will finally shell out for Photoshop CS3. Photoshop is very happy to have a scratch disc, which is not the boot disc. So I'd like to make that expensive girl happy, and put a smaller, second hard drive in. (not a Raptor - noisy, I heard - and possibly running too hot in the iMac anyway...)

Which disc would you recommend, and what size? Are smaller hard drives quicker to access than larger ones (search times, or any other reason...)?

And, secondly, can I put it in myself, or is this a major enterprise, which voids the warranty? (I have seen my G5 iMac open - looks rather crowded in there... maybe there are some bad mistakes you can make by installing a hard drive there yourself)

[mduell]

Larger disks are generally faster with transfer speeds than smaller disks, and the seek time is the same.

The iMacs only support one internal hard drive, so you'll have to put the scratch drive in a Firewire enclosure.

[Veltliner]

Thanks, mduell!

So firewire 800 is fast enough? I have heard you can connect eSATA II to an this 24" iMac.

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by mduell 

Larger disks are generally faster with transfer speeds than smaller disks.

Why exactly?

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Veltliner 

Why exactly?

Higher density on platter at the same rpm means more bits seen/written by the head per second.

Larger disk likely also means your disk is less filled up and less fragmented. That can equate to better performance.

HD comparisons depend on many things. Usually there is no simple rule to go buy. Actually benchmarks of the disks you're considering and additionally taking into account how much plan to fill them and hat kind of transfers you mainly do (small/large chunks, linear/random access, etc.) are the only meaningful thing to go by. Simple advice like 'go for the largest capacity' or 'go for the highest rpm' oversimplifies the issue.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Veltliner 

So firewire 800 is fast enough?

For a single external disk it certainly is.

I have heard you can connect eSATA II to an this 24" iMac.

No, the 24" iMac has FW800, FW400, and USB2. The enclosures you use will connect a disk (which will have a PATA or SATA interface) to one of the iMac's interfaces. You can chose which one depending on what the enclosure offers. FW800 enclosures are usually more expensive than USB2, but they (or actually the bridge) certainly perform better if you put in a decent disk.

I have a disk at home that reaches ~45 MB/s over FW400, but only ~25 MB/s over USB2 on my C2D MBP. So it's obvious I'm not gonna connect it through USB2. I'd try FW800 to see if I can get even higher (because 45 MB/s is suspiciously close to FW400's limit), but the enclosure unfortunately doesn't offer FW800.

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by Simon 

put in a decent disk.

When you read the reviews on newegg's website, there's a good deal of "horror reviews" on pretty much any disc.

I also want the most silent performance possible. Do you happen to know a really silent disc?

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by Simon 

Higher density on platter at the same rpm means more bits seen/written by the head per second.

Larger disk likely also means your disk is less filled up and less fragmented. That can equate to better performance.

HD comparisons depend on many things. Usually there is no simple rule to go buy. Actually benchmarks of the disks you're considering and additionally taking into account how much plan to fill them and hat kind of transfers you mainly do (small/large chunks, linear/random access, etc.) are the only meaningful thing to go by. Simple advice like 'go for the largest capacity' or 'go for the highest rpm' oversimplifies the issue.

This is very interesting.

Would you have a link to a site where I can learn more about tweaking disc performance? (I already have Disc Warrior, which could probably help).

Also, whenever I look for good disk reviews, I either get those customer reviews, or reviews that reek of being only one step away from product placement.

[Simon]

We recently purchased a couple of large disks here for an eight-core MP and some other MPs. I found this review interesting. As is turns out the WD 750 GB HDD was faster than the Hitachi 1 TB HDD even though both were running at the same rpm. We bought a couple of Hitachis (in those cases where we just need every byte) and some WDs as normal work partitions (~50% capacity used on average). Our own tests confirmed the BF measurements. Supposedly very fast 1 TB Seagates were becoming available but at the time we bought these disks they weren't shipping yet.

And this just since you asked, these disks can't be considered really silent. But they're big and they're fast.

[Veltliner]

The review was really interesting.

What I wonder is, if silent computing will become more important over time. There are several people out there who'd rather not have howling fans and whining discs.

I have once seen a review of hard discs regarding the noise they are making.

---

PS: a friend of mine is running eSATAII with a special adapter off his MacBook Pro 17", as FW800, so he said, would lead to freezing. Have you ever tried those eSATAs on your PowerBooks? eSATA II is a amazing 3GB per second. You almost feel the wind of speed in your face.

[funkboy]

I recommend OWC's Elite-AL series; they match the look of the aluminum iMac (though I see you're going a generation older for the matte display... I want matte, too) and are pretty quiet. I'm using a Mac Mini, and a quiet computer is important to me.

OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro FireWire 800 + FireWire 400 + USB 2.0 + eSATA 'Quad Interface' Solutions up to 1.0TB at OtherWorldComputing.com

The blue LED on the front is obnoxious, so I ended up covering mine with a small piece of paper which still allows the light to shine through, but not very much.
Also, the drive spins down just fine after a few minutes of inactivity, which makes the drive silent... but also not active

Edit: Crap, I intended this for another thread... but its applicable here too, so I'll leave it.