WD Raptor 8M cache or 16 MB cache?

Question

Hello, I have a Mac G5 Dual 2.0 GHz and I want to buy one of this drive
but I'm not sure about the compatibility with my system.
If I use these drives on a firewire 800 external case I don't know
if they're going to perform as well as internal.
Thank you for your comments.

Answer 1

Hi-
You can see the performance of the Raptor and many other drives, as the boot drive, in these performance tests.
I agree with Kenichi, that the Raptor in an external housing would be a waste.
As a boot drive, the Raptor is fantastic, but for external use, the same money will get an enterprise class Seagate, Hitachi or Western Digital of 750GB or better, and perform on par or better than the Raptor in read/write performance. See these performance tests.
Also, the Raptor is old technology, and the newest enterprise class SATA drives, with up to 5x the capacity of the Raptor, often perform better than the Raptor as a boot drive.
Any external SATA drive will benefit from using an eSATA connection to SATA controller card. Even with firewire 800 connection, the SATA drive will perform slower than on the internal connector, especially with write performance. These performancetests illustrate the point.
If you are really serious about drive performance, the tests involving the top enterprise class drives, the 150gb Raptor, and the new (coming soon), 300GB VelociRaptor may interest you.
This is cool!