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Future proof new internal drives for Mac Pro 1,1 (2006)

G

GMJ

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 18, 2014
1
0
Hi - I have a Mac Pro 1,1 (2006) which has worked brilliantly since I bought it. It's now a little long in the tooth and I'm frustrated that I can't upgrade things like Lightroom and the OSX because it is not supported anymore. I'm not financially in a position yet where I can ditch it and get an iMac but for the next year or so I need to increase my internal drive space.

My question is, what hard drives would you suggest if the plan was to use the drives internally for a year and then still be able to place them into an external USB 3 caddy and continue to use them alongside a new iMac? Anyone with any suggestions for caddies would be great too. The reason I ask is because I have an Icy Dock Raid caddy and I know that there are certain drives that are not compatible with the caddy so I don't want to buy 4 new drives for a relatively ancient computer and then find I buy a modern caddy and none of the drives fit in it.

Many thanks
Greg
 
phrehdd

phrehdd

macrumors 601
Oct 25, 2008
4,311
1,311
Greg - I can't offer you exact drive recommendations (brand/model/) but you may want to give some thought to the following -

Since your goal is to be more future oriented, have you considered perhaps a purchase of a used Mac Mini to go along with external drives? The only caveat might be video if you are doing video intensive work but all that is required is to compare the performance of an on board Mac Mini graphics chip performance with the video your Mac Pro offers. Some of the newer model Mac Mini specs prove to be superior to the early Mac Pros.

As for drives, consider your goal of getting the right external devices then which drives would be of value to populate the enclosure.

So you are aware, this exercise of old Mac Pro to Mac Mini is not a step backwards. I know, as I have done this and connect external drives as well as Blue Ray reader/writer and connect to a network with 2 NAS devices.

Last - if you go for USB3 connections, make sure you get the higher end USB3 (better chipset) as it does make a difference. As example, one of my 2.5" USB3 enclosures from Firmtek rivals some Thunderbolt 1 enclosures in reads, small and large writes. If you are game for 3.5 enclosures or RAID boxes, examine those first then what drives to use to populate. Just be aware that (to the best of my knowledge) that USB3 does not support TRIM and thus, SSD external is better handled by Thunderbolt if that is also a considered external drive solution.
 
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