As we wanted to test those drives, we have installed two Velociraptors (300 GB each) in a Mac Pro. We will not provide the procedure yet, as we did not find an easy way to complete the installation. However, below are 2 photos showing the drives.
In summary, we removed the huge cooling system from both Velociraptor, and installed copper-based heatsink. We then assembled both HDs together, and added a cooling system dedicated to 3.5” HD. We then installed such package in a 5.25” metal enclosure and fix it in the space located below the Superdrive of a Mac Pro. We then only needed to plug two SATA cables between the motherboard and the Velociraptors.
Below is the performance test of one Velociraptor:
When set as a RAID 0 volume, performance level is quite substantial:
To conclude, we challenged our heatsink system to further test its ability to keep the Velociraptors cool environment. For this purpose we ran sequential copies during 2 hours. The internal temperature probe never reached a temperature over the 39°C, demonstrating that such homemade installation was viable. Of course we would definitely prefer to see Western Digital releasing the Velociraptor in a format compatible with our Macs, as this drive is certainly the best model for Pro applications or users not willing to install a SAS.
