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Page 3 of 8 System & Scratch Disks: My system disk is also a carryover from the last system. The fastest hard disk in the world at the time of purchase, this disk still leaves very little to be desired. The newest 15,000 RPM offerings from Seagate and Fujitsu offer higher transfer rates and Ultra320 interface support but a lightly used 15K.2 (or X15-36LP) disk (especially in 18GB flavor) still represents a great bargain. What changed for this system is the purchase of a matching twin for use as a capture/scratch disk. When funds permit, I plan to RAID-0 the pair for even more stellar performance. While the 36GB afforded by the RAID will be nice, 18GB is sufficient for my application needs. As it sits, the disks are still far from slow and also provide the next best thing to RAM when I am forced to call upon a pagefile. The 2-3GB upgrade should take care of this need for the time being. That said, if you must page to disk, this is the disk to do it with. I have maintained system stability using over 3.5GB of total memory and while sluggish, the system never missed a beat. The pagefile is configured as a pair of 2048MB files, one on each disk. This will change to a single 4096MB file on the RAID volume. I see little need to upgrade here. While everyone seems to be hot for Serial ATA Raptor setups, I've yet to see one that handles the heat of hard workstation use as well as my SCSI rig does. Once the RAID-0 upgrade move is made, I don't see anything anywhere near the price taking this setup out of my rig for some time to come. Storage Disks: A carryover in principle but a reworking in practice. 15K SCSI is too pricey for mass storage (and of negligible use). 7200RPM/8MB desktop drives have become commonplace and have dropped in price accordingly. Previously, I had a pair of WD1200JB 120GB disks for storage. This worked well but simply wasn't enough. I never would have guessed 240GB could go so quickly but it did. This time around, I started with a 200GB Western Digital disk I had planned on adding to the old system and added a 180GB IBM/Hitachi disk found for only $50 after rebates. This took me to 380GB of room so far...which is enough for now. Still having a few bucks left in my storage budget, I decided to buy something I'd been lacking for the longest time: an external disk. While I could have assembled an external disk for a bit less money than the trendy LaCie set me back, it looks really slick, is built like a tank and can be rack mounted with another specimen with a kit LaCie sells. This worked for me so I got one. I chose the Firewire-only flavor since USB 2.0 support is few and far between on Macintosh systems (I have to work cross platform frequently both at school and out in the field). The dual-interface drives were significantly more expensive at the time and seemed to serve no purpose to me. If you are in a similar situation and have no specific requirement for USB, I recommend Firewire (IEEE-1394) based drives over USB. USB, as an interface, is far more susceptible to problems due to the activity of so many devices on the bus. I've heard tragic stories of people who have lost large amounts of data when hot-plugging a mouse or tablet on the same USB bus as their hard drive. All it takes is one errant driver for anything on the bus and you're asking for trouble. Firewire is usually reserved for video capture and hard drives and I like it that way. Also in the ‘fleet' so to speak is a WD800JB 80GB disk usually kept offline as a ghost image backup. Ghost is cheep, drives are cheep. Get both, make a backup now and again. In the heat of a tight deadline pressed by a system failure, nothing puts the mind at ease like a flawless 1000+ MB per second restore with the push of a button. (More on my backup/recovery strategy later). |
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