Looking for Advice on Hard Drives for 2008 Mac Pro

[videoed]

Hello,

Looking for advice on internal storage for Mac Pro for the purpose of video editing.

If anyone knows the specs or terminologies I should be applying to my search or any info at all is appreciated!

Thanks,

ed

 

[alust2013]

I would check out the Western Digital Caviar Black series. Definitely known to be good, fast drives.

 

[dissolve]

You'll primarily want 7200rpm. Don't go less for a disk you'll be accessing a lot. I definitely agree with the previous recommendation of a Caviar Black. If you prefer a different manufacturer, just try and match specs with that one.

 

[videoed]

thanks for the tips!


question:

what are the differences between the caviar black and caviar green as it relates to video editing?

here is what i can tell from the stat sheets on macsales:

capacity both 2TB capacity

interface: both SATA 3Gb/s

buffer to disk: Green-1,156 Mb/s, Black-145MB/s------is 1,156Mb= 144.5MB?

having trouble seeing difference other than green is quite a bit less expensive.

thanks!

 

[Hellhammer]

Green is slower as it's 5400rpm drive. What I've seen, the WD20EARS version of Green (i.e. current gen) tops out at ~110MB/s while 2TB Caviar Black tops out at ~145MB/s. So, for video editing, you want speed, thus the 2TB should be better.

Or another option is to get two Caviar Green 1TBs (or 2TBs if you want to) and put them in RAID 0. That way it should be faster than one Caviar Black. Just make sure to have a good backup since RAID 0 doubles the risk of data loss.

 

[wyrmintheapple]

The western digital range are supposed to be split into three easy to choose from categories. The green runs at 5400rpm usually but will spin up to 7200 where necessary, then straight back down again, it's designed for lower power consumption. The blue is a mid range item, neither the fastest nor the lowest power use, somewhere between the two. The black isn't bothered about power consumption, it's very very fast.

They aren't necessarily the best on the market, even in their particular fields, but my experience is quality is very high on WD drives, I would stand by other people's recommendations.

 

[Hellhammer]

The western digital range are supposed to be split into three easy to choose from categories. The green runs at 5400rpm usually but will spin up to 7200 where necessary, then straight back down again, it's designed for lower power consumption. The blue is a mid range item, neither the fastest nor the lowest power use, somewhere between the two. The black isn't bothered about power consumption, it's very very fast.

Actually, what I've heard, the speed of the hard drive is always the same. There is no "Turbo Boost" feature in HDs so it's running at the same speed since day one. I think each HD is tuned at the factory and that is where the 5400-7200rpm thing comes from as one HD may be 5401rpm while another one is 5954rpm (just throwing out numbers) but the performance should be similar.

Nowadays, it's either Green or Black if you want +1TB drive since Blue series tops out at 1TB. Green is up to 3TB and Black is up to 2TB (3TB should be coming soon).

 

[videoed]

thanks all for the help!

I went with the caviar black off amazon