Upgrading Macintosh HD to RAID 0
About a week ago, I removed my Apple Refurb Western Digital 500GB HD (5400rpm) from the Mac Pro and replaced it with a striped array of two Samsung 1TB disks, each with 7200rpm.
The HD has been the bottleneck with my machine, it just had to be faster—so I didn’t really benchmark it. I have stopped the time for boot and shutdown though (auto-login enabled, some tools auto-starting):
WD 500GB 5400rpm:
Up: 2:17m (43s) — Down: 22s
Samsung 1TB 7200rpm 2× (RAID 0):
Up: 0:44m (35s) — Down: 27s
Seconds in brackets are boot time until Finder first shows, longer times are time until Google Quick Search Box shows (which means that all auto-starting applications are loaded).
This is by all means not scientifically measured, but it sufficiently shows the increase in speed while booting the machine and opening up applications—shutting down on the other hand takes 5 seconds longer than before (anyone knows why? Please share in the comments!).
And, after a week, I can say everything feels way snappier 
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I’m a little jealous of your hard drive configuration…
1TB disks! Wow! How much did you have to spend on this configuration? Whatever your answer is, I’m sure it’s worth it. My dream is a super computer like yours, but that will have to wait a couple of years more. I envy you.