The 320 GB Hard Disk in the Mac Pro is slow

Dave Zeiler of the Baltimore Sun has received his new Mac Pro. Like all who have ordered this type of machine, he bought the memory elsewhere and also two additional Seagate 500 GB hard disks. Like many of those receiving this kind of machine, his first game was to launch benchmark software to give one the pleasure in power of the machine. He was surprised to find that the original hard disk fitted by Apple- the 320 GB from Seagate - was 30% slower! The benchmark score with the 320 GB disks was even slower than a previous generation Mac Pro also fitted with 320 GB disks.
The reason for this lack of performance is simple. Apple has economized in places that are not easily seen and there is no reason to stop at this point; all manufacturers do the same. Be warned: if you want to get the best out of one of these machines, fit the fastest possible disk drive right from the beginning. In this field the best of the class are SAS disks, but to install them it is necessary to get a Apple RAID card, a 710 euro option. The Western Digital Raptor is the best solution with the best ratio of quality to price; however nowadays there are also 1 TB hard disks that have equivalent read/write speeds. However the access times are longer and it is probably this that has the biggest influence on the speed of the system.