Hard drive configurations

[gazwas]

Hi everyone...... first post!

I have just bought a dual 2.8 8 core Mac Pro and am after a little advise on how to get the best from its hard drive performance. The machine is all stock apart from the 8GB of ram I bought with it.

I will us the machine for my business as a commercial photogrpher (stills only) and using the Mac OS only. Games and TV are of no interest to me with this machine as it will only be used with PS CS3, Lightroom, Capture One Pro and the like.

I am looking at adding some hard drives but wanted some pointers as to what to do. The machine is still in its box so nothing is set up, so ideal to change anything at this stage. I understand the stock 320GB HD is pretty rubbish so was wondering do I get somthing else in its place? If I do, is it simply just a case of taking the 320 out and replacing it with something better and then just booting the machine from the supplied setup DVD's to set up the new HD?

Which drives are recommended that are at a good value/performance level to be used as:

1. System Drive
2. PS Scratch disc
3. Storage drive

Thanks in advance.

Gareth.

 

[gazwas]

HD Suggestions

For the system and PS scratch discs I was thinking of getting a couple of Seagate Barracuda (ST3320613AS) 7200.11 320GB SATA-II 16MB Cache.

Seems good value http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-154-SE&tool=3 and good performance figs on Toms Hardware.

 

[sickmacdoc]

For the system and PS scratch discs I was thinking of getting a couple of Seagate Barracuda (ST3320613AS) 7200.11 320GB SATA-II 16MB Cache.

Seems good value http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-154-SE&tool=3 and good performance figs on Toms Hardware.

A lot of positive feedback has been given to the Western Digital 640Gb drives for performance based on their 2 platter design and reasonable price if you are looking for a mid-sized drive. A lot of people have wound up using them for the boot drive and more. A nice review pointing out the advantages to the 2 platter design can be found at http://techreport.com/articles.x/14380 while the drives themselves (at only $85 with free three day shipping!) can be seen at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136218

If you were intalling a replacement for the boot drive, you could indeed just set it up with the install disks or you could just format it with Disk Utility and use either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to "clone" your 320Gb stock drive to it since that would still be considered a clean installation of OSX.

As far as storage drives, I personally would recommend the 1Tb Samsung Spinpoint F1 drives which have been great performers for me- performance review at http://techreport.com/articles.x/14200 They were among the fastest SATA drives around until the WD 640Gb drives appeared- and probably are still the fastest overall in 1Tb drives. They are enough of a bargain at $165-ish that I put three in my MacPro and love them.

One last note- whatever storage you plan to use please do yourself a favor and set up an appropriate BACKUP plan for them as well and budget for the additional hardware to accomplish that. Painful when pulling out the pocketbook but far less painful than losing all your saved work should a backup not be in place (and updated! ) when a hard disk either has a bad write or fails altogether!