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Blu-Ray Writer and Internal Drive Question

lbeck

lbeck

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 5, 2009
381
0
Looking to buy a 2TB internal drive as well as a blu-ray reader/writer for my new mac pro. Im going to be replacing my factory installed optical drive with the blu ray drive. The two I like are linked below.

1. Does anyone have a bad experience with these?

2. Are there better drives out there for that cost? I saw the WD Green Caviar 2TB drive for only $99, how does that compare to the black caviar?

Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002MD05SA/ref=ord_cart_shr?ie=UTF8&m=A1KG6QISTB45M0

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0037FSYQC/ref=ord_cart_shr?ie=UTF8&m=A2EUTVCJXLAJ4K
 
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I've got a LiteOn Blu ray drive in mine, which I believe was maybe $5 cheaper, it works great, no problems, as for the hard drives, not really my area of expertise.
 
lbeck said:
2. Are there better drives out there for that cost? I saw the WD Green Caviar 2TB drive for only $99, how does that compare to the black caviar?
Click to expand...

The black series has a rpm speed of 7200 vs 5400 for the green, in the real world what I get for transfers on my green drives I have are at the low end 60mb/s highest I have seen low to mid 90's.
 
neckarb said:
I've got a LiteOn Blu ray drive in mine, which I believe was maybe $5 cheaper, it works great, no problems, as for the hard drives, not really my area of expertise.
Click to expand...

Will your computer sleep normally without a disc in the blu ray drive? Others have reported the LG blu ray drive waking up a MP as it checks for media. Interested to see if the LiteOn performs any better in that regard.
 
dissolve said:
Will your computer sleep normally without a disc in the blu ray drive? Others have reported the LG blu ray drive waking up a MP as it checks for media. Interested to see if the LiteOn performs any better in that regard.
Click to expand...

No I wont have anything in it unless I'm using it. Do you have any links to other users having this issue?

Are the Green WD's louder than the Black drives?
 
lbeck said:
Are the Green WD's louder than the Black drives?
Click to expand...

Mine are pretty much silent like the WD 640gb I have as well, it is of the 7200rpm variety so if that is any indication the blacks are most likely the same don't own one so can't say for sure though..
 
I have some 2TB WD Caviar Blacks and I can't recommend them enough. The performance is excellent (far, far better than the Green series). As for noise, under normal and even heavy usage, my OS and data drives are quite silent (and I'm often streaming from a 270GB instrument library), but I have to admit that the Black that I have as my Time Machine drive is audible and a little annoying when TM is crunching away. Overall, though, I'd say pay the extra and get a Black.
 
Awesome, thanks. Anyone else have comment son the LG writer? What does the (Bulk) mean on Amazon page? Its a lot cheaper than most places and assuming its cause it says (Bulk). Anyone?
 
dissolve said:
Will your computer sleep normally without a disc in the blu ray drive? Others have reported the LG blu ray drive waking up a MP as it checks for media. Interested to see if the LiteOn performs any better in that regard.
Click to expand...

Wow thats bizzare, never heard that but in all honesty i Have no idea as I've turned off all sleeping
 
I'm curious about the sleeping issue as well. Can anyone that has the LG confirm it?
 
lbeck said:
Awesome, thanks. Anyone else have comment son the LG writer? What does the (Bulk) mean on Amazon page? Its a lot cheaper than most places and assuming its cause it says (Bulk). Anyone?
Click to expand...

Bulk in this instance means a bare drive, no cables, software etc..

rtrt said:
have a couple of the green series and they have a slow spin up - quite fraustrating.

not sure if there's anything i can do about it - as when you set the mp to not spin down drives then that affects them all iirc.

wonder if there's a firmware mod i can apply to the drives themselves?
Click to expand...

Most manufacturers don't let you flash the firmware yourself on a hard drive too many things can go wrong, the only time I have really ever seen it happen was with the 7200.11 series fiasco by Seagate there they didn't want to RMA millions of units so let us do it. For the spin down you are correct uncheck the option and all drives stay awake now if we were running GNU/Linux it would simply be a matter of using hdparm and setting the spin down to off on the drives you wanted not to do it, not sure if that is available in the MacPorts repository/if it works the same under OSX using it so may be worth checking, personally I leave them all spinning.
 
MacUser2525 said:
Bulk in this instance means a bare drive, no cables, software etc..



Most manufacturers don't let you flash the firmware yourself on a hard drive too many things can go wrong, the only time I have really ever seen it happen was with the 7200.11 series fiasco by Seagate there they didn't want to RMA millions of units so let us do it. For the spin down you are correct uncheck the option and all drives stay awake now if we were running GNU/Linux it would simply be a matter of using hdparm and setting the spin down to off on the drives you wanted not to do it, not sure if that is available in the MacPorts repository/if it works the same under OSX using it so may be worth checking, personally I leave them all spinning.
Click to expand...

Do I need any of the cables for the new mac pro 6-core? I ink the MP has all I need, I should be able to just plug he drive in the bay without any cables, right?
 
I have the LG Blu-ray 10x "Mac Pro kit" model from OWC, and though I don't sleep my computer, I ran a sleep test, and it slept just fine. I didn't leave it sleeping all day or anything, but the drive is silent and burns BD-R discs perfectly.

The first day, when I installed the LG, it was making a sort of "access" type noise every few minutes, but then it automagically stopped doing that later that same day. It's like it was settling into it's new home, like a cat pawing up a pillow or something. Heh. I can't explain why, but it has never done it since that first few hours.
 
wonderspark said:
I have the LG Blu-ray 10x "Mac Pro kit" model from OWC, and though I don't sleep my computer, I ran a sleep test, and it slept just fine. I didn't leave it sleeping all day or anything, but the drive is silent and burns BD-R discs perfectly.

The first day, when I installed the LG, it was making a sort of "access" type noise every few minutes, but then it automagically stopped doing that later that same day. It's like it was settling into it's new home, like a cat pawing up a pillow or something. Heh. I can't explain why, but it has never done it since that first few hours.
Click to expand...

The model OWC sells has a different identifier number than the OEM one on Newegg and other sites. Not sure what they did differently, if anything. Thanks for posting your experience, glad it works well for you. It's not much more expensive than the OEM model so it's definitely the safe bet for MP users.
 
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