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I ALREADY need more hard drive and RAM for my Mac Pro.

Thanks for the responses...I'm not sure I need all that right now. Truth be told, I'm not filling them up that fast I suppose. 500GB will set me up for a while I think...at least by the time I'll need more the 750GB drives will be really cheap(I didn't know you could get 1TB drives for a Mac Pro!). Plus it's true that the 500Gb drives are cheaper $/GB. I'm also not sure about buying two...really I've never even had an idea of what RAID is or why to use it. Should I really do this? Can I really possibly lose everything on a drive somehow or is the one drive fine for what I'm doing(heaviest so far is 30-50 track recording and mixing on Logic)?

I'm curious too about the the new series of Seagate 7200.11 drives, the Enterprise class Drives (ES). Are these that much better? I'm actually on a pretty tight budget right now and I was hoping to get away with just a new drive. I've also just been told elsewhere to avoid combining Seagate drives and Macs together and to go for a Western Digital but it looks like here the Seagates are preferred. This was suggested by someone over at Apple Discussions:
WD Caviar SE16 750GB $175 is FAST and excellent bargain at OWC currently. If you plan to RAID, then you might want to get the RE2 series (500 or 750).
Click to expand...
What do you all think? BTW, I really appreciate the help, I need to get a new drive before the band starts recording again, my stock 250gb is down to 70GB and the next serious recording run might run it down pretty low.
 
Moof1904 said:
I've recently vowed to avoid Western Digital drives because of their Digital Rights technology that they've started putting into their drives that restricts users from sharing certain files.
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There's no such thing. There's some software that does this in Windows, but that doesn't affect Mac users in any way, and it doesn't even affect Windows users if they choose not to use Western Digital's software. A total non-issue.

dupedd said:
I've also just been told elsewhere to avoid combining Seagate drives and Macs together
Click to expand...

99% of the time, "information" like that is bogus. All hard drives can fail, Seagates no more so than any other manufacturer. I have Maxtor drives in my Power Mac with no issues--Seagate owns Maxtor. I've had Seagate drives in the past with no issues. Don't worry about brands, unless you have hard information about actual failure rates.

--Eric
 
Do I really need to get two hard drives and set them up for RAID 1? If I understand this correctly, I will just be backing up everything I store on one onto the other one(mirroring). Strangely, no-one's really brought this up to me since getting started with computer recording but it makes sense. I'm wondering though, how likely is is that one would die and lose everything? Would you all recommend absolutely doing this?

Money being the issue, are the regular Seagate Barracuda's fine? I might want to save some money if I'm getting two now.
 
dupedd said:
Do I really need to get two hard drives and set them up for RAID 1? If I understand this correctly, I will just be backing up everything I store on one onto the other one(mirroring). Strangely, no-one's really brought this up to me since getting started with computer recording but it makes sense. I'm wondering though, how likely is is that one would die and lose everything? Would you all recommend absolutely doing this?

Money being the issue, are the regular Seagate Barracuda's fine? I might want to save some money if I'm getting two now.
Click to expand...

Well since the chances of you losing both drives is slimmer than losing just one, it is sort of a failsafe for existing data. By no means should you consider it a replacement for real backups though. It is purely a means of protection from drive failure, for data corruption you still need a real backup method.

Note: I am taking the stance that the work you are doing is really important to you and you would be pretty upset to actually have it lost on a dead drive or get corrupted by accident.
 
Hmm, I see. Yes, I would be REALLY upset if I lost what I had. How does a drive corrupt or go dead anyway? I'm a real novice here, I'll go and look into "real backups" as well. You're referring to backups on a non-local or external hard drive, right?
 
dupedd said:
Hmm, I see. Yes, I would be REALLY upset if I lost what I had. How does a drive corrupt or go dead anyway? I'm a real novice here, I'll go and look into "real backups" as well. You're referring to backups on a non-local or external hard drive, right?
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Yeah, real backups are backing up data to tape, external hard drive, or dvd.

Sometimes drives just die, dunno what causes it sometimes. Some drives will do the click of death, others just will quit working.
 
I'm wondering if just getting a backup like an external drive would be enough for me or the best decision. I could save just what I wanted to it, correct? I could save just say my Logic recordings and nothing else and if if I kept up with this as I made changes to my project I could bypass having to actually have a RAID-1 config and having to buy a second internal drive. Would this be fine ya think?
 
you should absolutely get a 2nd internal drive at the minimum. You never want to do heavy media (audio/video/animation) stuff on your system drive.

An external drive for backup would also be a good idea. Hard drives are cheap. Grab a Seagate 500gb drive off of newegg and search around for an external.
 
Well I meant I was thinking on getting a second internal drive for just my Logic recordings and using the stock Mac 250 drive for everything else. I just didn't want to have to get a third to match(mirror) my second(recording project) drive.

What would be a goof external drive? Anything to look out for?

Thanks, BTW
 
don't worry about running a RAID. Save that for future upgrades. For the moment, just get a good external drive for backup. If you are running Leopard, Time Machine makes this very easy. Good Externals to look at would be...Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor, and my personal favorite LaCie. I've personally owned 3 LaCie drives, and everywhere i've worked we've used LaCie for external server backups (tape and hardrive). They make good stuff. Never had a problem with a singe one.

-JE

oh...i say get a good external, alone with the second internal you are looking into.
 
Eric5h5 said:
There's no such thing. There's some software that does this in Windows, but that doesn't affect Mac users in any way, and it doesn't even affect Windows users if they choose not to use Western Digital's software. A total non-issue.
Click to expand...

So, let's see: because Western Digital's decision to exert software/firmware control over what the owner of the data and drive can do with the files on their drive just happens to not work on a Mac (yet), you're okay with continuing to do business with Western Digital? That's your call. Me, I'd rather help send them a message now so that the issue never becomes and issue on the Mac. By WD's own admission, they're currently testing the waters to see how much restriction their consumers will tolerate. They're interested in protecting themselves from lawsuits stemming from file sharing involving their hardware. If we act like we're okay with this, soon all the hard drive manufacturers will follow suit, placing the interests of Hollywood over those of their consumer.
 
I'm having a real tough time telling the difference between all of these. I'm not sure what I need in terms of RPM, CACHE, all of that. Is it really worth getting the Enterprise Class drives? What would you choose out of all of these? I'm just overwhelmed with all the variables but with price being a concern I don't want to opt for the cheapest one and it be a bad decision.


How about this one from OWCOWC:http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Seagate/ST3500320AS/

Or how about this Western Digital 500GB Caviar SE16 SATA-II 16MB Cache 7200rpm 8.9ms
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Western%20Digital/WD5000AAKS/


For externals I've just started looking. This looked like a good deal but I don't know about external drives.


Western Digital My Book Essential WDG1U5000N 500GB 7200 RPM USB 2.0 External Hard Drivehttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136025
Is this a good bet?
 
I'm having a real tough time telling the difference between all of these. I'm not sure what I need in terms of RPM, CACHE, all of that. I've been told that the Enterprise Class drives of the Seagate Barracuda are worth springing for but I just don't know about all of this stuff? The researching has really only confused me more and more. What would you choose out of all of these? I'm just overwhelmed with all the variables but with price being a concern I don't want to opt for the cheapest one and it be a bad decision.


How about this one from OWC: 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 SATA II 7200RPM 32MB Buffer with Perpendicular Drive Technology. New w/5 Year Seagate Warranty $150:http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Seagate/ST3500320AS/

Or how about this Western Digital 500GB Caviar SE16 SATA-II 16MB Cache 7200rpm 8.9ms, $100
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Western%20Digital/WD5000AAKS/

Here's the enterprise class that I keep hearing about...I don't know, it's just so much more..$190:
500GB Seagate Barracuda ES-2 Enterprise-Class SATA II 7200RPM 16MB Buffer Hard Drive W/ Perpendicular Drive Technology. New w/5 Year Seagate Warranty: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Seagate/ST3500320NS/

Here's the Seagate Barracuda that for all I can tell is it must be a SATA-I and that's why it's cheaper. Everything else looks the same to me.Why wouldn't I want a SATA-I?
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive, $120
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148288

Now this WD Caviar, 750GB just caught my attention. Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD7500AAKS 750GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive, $155
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136131


As far as externals for backup, am I understanding correctly that I don't even necessarily NEED an external case, that I can just buy any internal drive and just hook it up to one of my empty bays in my Mac Pro and backup like that and then just remove that drive when I'm done? Is this difficult, does having the external case and backing up via USB2 or Firewire make it much simpler? Can I easily choose what to back up and what not to and it 'sychronize' on it's own or do I need a program like Chronosync to do this easily?(http://www.econtechnologies.com/site/Pages/ChronoSync/chrono_overview.html)


Otherwise, this external drive(w/ case) caught my attention.

Western Digital My Book Essential WDG1U5000N 500GB 7200 RPM USB 2.0 External Hard Drive, $143[URL="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136025"]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136025[/URL]
Is this a good bet?
BTW, I really appreciate all the help.
 
Something must be wrong for your Mac Pro to be crashing or freezing up when using Logic Express with 3 GB RAM.

Are you recording on the same disk as the system drive? Don't do this.

You want to designate a hard drive for recording and another for the system.

That should clear any current problems you are having.

Also, a Mac Pro seems like overkill for running Logic Express.

I really hope you are using that powerful beast for some pro applications.

That is what it is meant for.
 
If you're doing any rendering having a second internal drive to use as a scratch desk or to write to will speed up your machine and help prevent hard drive fatigue. I'm not saying that you shouldn't back up your work but when I was in school for video editing I was always taught to have two hard drives for any sort of rendering.
 
Thanks but I'm actually past that problem more or less. I know that I need a second hard drive now to run my projects on separately from drive that the rest of the system is running on. I've been at researching for the past couple of weeks and I'm down to a few choices that I've links and questions about in the above post. If someone could please just point me in the right direction for which drive I should go for of the few listed I would very much appreciate it. Certain question I just can't seem to find answers too.
 
Any of them are fine, all of them will work unless you get a bad drive. There are preferences people have, some benchmark better than others, but most of them are generally pretty similar. Buy what you can afford, the highest cache, fastest speed (most of them are 7200RPM, but look at things like seek time), where ever you can get it cheap, but legit, with a good warranty. The best would be the Hitachi, the higher class one being a little better and longer warranty, but about $30 more. The WD is usually the cheapest, but sometimes you can get a good deal on a Seagate. They both have 16MB, WD says they're "greener" (probably just better power management), Seagate's the best for the money usually, nice mix of speed and price. OWC and Newegg are both fine, add in tax and shipping and go with the cheaper option. Internal will be faster, and if you're getting a MP, it couldn't be easier to install and remove if necessary. I'd only go with USB/FW if you get a laptop or iMac, or need the portability. Otherwise just go with SATA.
 
Thank you. So I could just say go for the two WD Caviar's, use one as my main project drive and then simply hook the other one up to my my Mac Pro with little trouble when I want to back everything up, right?

Or how about this Western Digital 500GB Caviar SE16 SATA-II 16MB Cache 7200rpm 8.9ms, $100 3yr man. warranty
 
Just one small thing that probably won't make a huge difference, but just might help - the new Mac Pros have a 256bit memory bus, which means that they play extra nice if you install DIMMs in sets of 4, i.e. the 3 or 7Gb you mentioned would not be optimal arrangements - go for 4 or 8 instead. Many would also advise that your memory all be of the same type/manufacturer.

On drives, I'd say go for the highest spec you can get as the price is not much different. So for WD, go for "RAID edition" models, not least because they have 5 year warranties. Given that you're doing audio, look into Samsung Spinpoint drives as they are renowned for being particularly quiet.
 
Avoid USB

For audio, which typically requires decent HD performance, don't bother with an external drive. Internal drives on SATA will give you much better performance and will probably be quieter too. If you do go external, use Firewire rather than USB as it's much faster in practice and has lower latency.

An earlier poster mentioned a Mac Pro being overkill for Logic Express - I don't think so at all. It's perfectly feasible to max out an iMac long before a Mac Pro will start suffering, and if you run out of disk space on an iMac, you're stuck with external storage, which is slower, messier and more expensive. Should you want to upgrade your audio system in future (e.g. pro tools, or any other PCI audio system) that an iMac would be a non-starter.
 
Yeah, I'll be getting more RAM soon enough but right now I don't think I need it. We just need more hard drive. I guess I'll be going with the WD Caviar 500Gb, though maybe I'll go for the 750GB as it's the same price proportionately per GB. Although someone has recommended the Seagate Barracuda over the Caviar on account of the specs but it has some pretty bad reviews on Newegg.


Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive, $120
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148288"]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148288 [/URL]


Also, wouldn't I be able to just get two of whichever HDD's and use one for a backup by hooking it up internally in my mac pro and removing when done backing up? I could do this, right?....with little trouble?
 
dupedd said:
Also, wouldn't I be able to just get two of whichever HDD's and use one for a backup by hooking it up internally in my mac pro and removing when done backing up? I could do this, right?....with little trouble?
Click to expand...

You could, but why? Just use Time Machine to let it back up. Maybe get a fast 500GB, then get a cheaper 750 as a backup. You can leave it in all the time, one of the beauties of the MP. If you need portability, get another external hard drive, a cheapy PATA drive and fw/usb case, and use it just for the files you need. Otherwise, a set it and forget it policy is the best for TM.
 
Thing is I don't have Leopard so I don't have time machine. I thought a big benefit of having a backup drive is that it is not connected to the computer so nothing could be lost if something fails in the computer or if there's an electrical surge, right?
 
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