So I've just finished upgrading all my internal HDs on my Mac Pro 1,1. My startup disk was over four years old, and it just seemed as though things would run smoother, faster bootup, etc, if I got a new drive. So now all the drives are brand new 7200rpm Hitachi's. Transferring between any two of them, activity monitor shows a sustained rate of around 125MB/s. Is that good? Is that "right" for my machine and new hard drives?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Are these hard drives transfer speeds good?
- Thread starter StephenCampbell
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
125MB/s sounds pretty average for a mid-class 7200rpm drive (Hitachis are not as fast as e.g. WD Caviar Blacks).
That's really good actually. Are you sure it is not peak? Caviar blacks can barely get over 100MB/s. Velociraptor 600GB gets 135-140MB/s average and it's 10,000RPM.
I am hesitant to believe it.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/...s/h2benchw-3.12-Avg-Read-Throughput,1010.html
I am hesitant to believe it.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/...s/h2benchw-3.12-Avg-Read-Throughput,1010.html
Depends on what review you look at (and what benchmark app is used). Here the 2TB Caviar Black gets 145MB/s.
Exactly.
Different benchmark utilities can produce different results (even the OS can make a difference - think block size), so a reader has to pay close attention to the details.
But it's better to rely on multiple 3rd party reviews rather than the data provided by the manufacturer (throughput values are manipulated to produce higher values than seen in the real world).
I'll test it more thoroughly when I get home this evening. I'm glad it's at least normal, because I'm pretty sure my old startup disk wouldn't transfer faster than 50 or 60 MB/s.
By the way, is there a way to force spotlight to index the computer? After I installed the OS on my new hard drive, it began indexing, and said it would take a long time, but I kept doing things like restarting the computer, without letting it finish, and then it finished really fast next time it was booted up.. it feels like I made it stop prematurely. But I don't know.
By the way, is there a way to force spotlight to index the computer? After I installed the OS on my new hard drive, it began indexing, and said it would take a long time, but I kept doing things like restarting the computer, without letting it finish, and then it finished really fast next time it was booted up.. it feels like I made it stop prematurely. But I don't know.
I just transferred a 15.42GB file from one 7200rpm Hitachi drive to the other, and for the first 6 or 7 GB it was consistently around 125MB/s, sometimes going higher, sometimes lower. 125MB is my estimate for the average. The peak was 137.5MB/s. Then, about half-way through the transfer, the rate dropped to around 50 - 70 MB/s for a while, and then back up to the 120s toward the end.
The Samsung F4 2TB drives @ 5400rpm are around 145mb/sec when transferring LARGE movie files.
I was looking at one of those for storage as they are supposed to be extra quiet as well. Samsung has been quite interesting lately.
Hitachi 3TB drives are very, very nice if you're looking at physical HDDs RAIDed inside Mac Pro vs. SSDs (which run into the ICH controller limit @ around 650-700MB/sec).
http://macperformanceguide.com/Storage-Drive-Hitachi-7K3000-3TB.html
I have 1TB F3 inside my PC and it really is quiet (and it's 7200rpm!). The value is great since Samsung was the cheapest too.