Mac Pro Hard Drive Recommendations

[Multimedia]

Seagate 750 Is The Sweet Spot Now

I only buy seagate, and they are the same brand of hard drives that apple uses in the mac pro. I will be soon running 3 750gb and 1 250gb hard drives, so my recommendation would be 3 750s

I agree with ampd. You can pick up Seagate 750's at sales for $200 or less each and they have a 5 year warranty. If money is an issue, 500GB Seagates are about $120-$105 each now. If money is NOT an issue then you can get 1TB Hitachi and soon Seagate for a little more than $300 each at sales.

If you're willing to trade capacity for speed, there aren't any SATA HDs faster than Western Digital's Raptor line.

There are currently three 10K RPM, 16MB cache models available:

150GB (WD1500ADFD) for about $250
74GB (WD740ADFD) for about $160
36GB (WD360ADFD for about $110

They come with a 5-year warranty and are supposed to be reliable, since they're built with enterprises in mind. I plan on getting the 74GB model to run my games off of when I get my Mac Pro, and, eventually, the 36GB model to use to run OS X and Windows off of (and use the HD that comes with the Mac Pro to hold my Users folder). I anticipate a considerable speed boost from those drives.

I too have a 140GB (net) WD Raptor Boot Drive on my MP. Nice speed bump.

 

[DZL]

i am totally confused when it comes to HD's.

What exactly am I looking for as far as spec's go as far as Mac Pro compatibility?

For instance, will this work:

Seagate

Thanks!

DZL.

 

[SDAVE]

DZL, don't worry about any compatibility issues, just get a good SATA drive that's on sale. I saw a 16MB Cache 7200.10 Seagate 500GB drive for $89, but didn't buy it.

Try to get the "retail" Seagate drives (ie. boxed) as these come with 5 year warranty.

Stick with Western Digital or Seagate and you won't be dissapointed. I'd stay away from Hitachi (They bought out the DeathStars from IBM) and Samsung and Maxtor (even though they are built by Seagate now)....

Just remember these, Seagates are loud, WD's are not...but Seagates are a bit faster than WD's in this regard.

 

[vicious7]

DZL, don't worry about any compatibility issues, just get a good SATA drive that's on sale. I saw a 16MB Cache 7200.10 Seagate 500GB drive for $89, but didn't buy it.

Try to get the "retail" Seagate drives (ie. boxed) as these come with 5 year warranty.

Stick with Western Digital or Seagate and you won't be dissapointed. I'd stay away from Hitachi (They bought out the DeathStars from IBM) and Samsung and Maxtor (even though they are built by Seagate now)....

Just remember these, Seagates are loud, WD's are not...but Seagates are a bit faster than WD's in this regard.

How loud is loud? Is it distractingly so?

 

[dkoralek]

Try to get the "retail" Seagate drives (ie. boxed) as these come with 5 year warranty.
.

This is not true. I have an OEM Segate 500 Gig drive that I bought from NewEgg and my warranty is good until January 2012 and two OEM WD Caviars that are slightly older and covered through the end of 2009 (You can check your warranty by entering the serial number on the Seagate or WD support sites), which are the standard 5- and 3-year warranties, respectivey. What you don't get are cables, which doesn't really matter a whole lot with the Mac Pro.

But, yes, any standard SATA 3 (or 300 depending on the nomenclature the site advertises with) 3.5" hard disk is compatible.

cheers.

 

[dkoralek]

How loud is loud? Is it distractingly so?

Sorry, you posted this while I was typing my previous response. I have 2 seagate 500s and a wd 160 and 500. the wd160 is the loudest of the bunch, and the older seagate is the quietist (the one that came with the computer). None of them are particularly loud. The SuperDrive on the otherhand... You probably will notice the hard drives, though, since the Mac Pro is so quiet. The WD Raptors are considerably noisier than any of the 7200rpm hard drives, from what I gather.

cheers.

 

[mkrishnan]

You can pick up Seagate 750's at sales for $200 or less each and they have a 5 year warranty. If money is an issue, 500GB Seagates are about $120-$105 each now.

Newegg has promotions now for the 750 @ $189.99 and the 500 at $104.99. I actually didn't even have to go through the hassle of using my credit card through Paypal -- I just used my Mastercard directly and the code still worked.

Source

PPAL808HDD01 - $10 off 750GB
PPAL808HDD02 - $15 off 500GB

I just got a 500GB using the second code (on the way).

 

[panzer06]

I'd stay away from Hitachi (They bought out the DeathStars from IBM)

I disagree. I have Hitachi hard drives in my MBP (upgraded from the stock Fujitsu), 2 external housings and the secondary drives on our Mac Pro. Prior to this I purchased 30 of them to upgrade laptops at my prior job. Only one failure after a laptop was dropped and Hitachi replaced it without question.

The IBM sale happened back in 2002, that is a lifetime in this business. Hitachi makes outstanding electronics and is know for superior product engineering.

I like Seagate too but sometimes Hitachi has larger capacity at a lower cost.

Cheers,

 

[SDAVE]

This is not true. I have an OEM Segate 500 Gig drive that I bought from NewEgg and my warranty is good until January 2012 and two OEM WD Caviars that are slightly older and covered through the end of 2009 (You can check your warranty by entering the serial number on the Seagate or WD support sites), which are the standard 5- and 3-year warranties, respectivey. What you don't get are cables, which doesn't really matter a whole lot with the Mac Pro.

But, yes, any standard SATA 3 (or 300 depending on the nomenclature the site advertises with) 3.5" hard disk is compatible.

cheers.

I own both OEM and retail boxes of WD and Seagate drives...from what Ive gathered through personal purchases is that under OEM, Seagate offers 3 years and WD offers 1 year...under retail, Seagate offers 5 years and WD 3 years. Maybe it has changed?

 

[dkoralek]

I own both OEM and retail boxes of WD and Seagate drives...from what Ive gathered through personal purchases is that under OEM, Seagate offers 3 years and WD offers 1 year...under retail, Seagate offers 5 years and WD 3 years. Maybe it has changed?

Can't give you an answer to that question. Just can tell you what my empirical evidence is from three OEM hard drives bought in the past year. The general information on the Seagate page is rather vague (essentially, the warranty could be 1, 3, or 5 years depending on the product and where you bought it). Entering the serial numbers for the three drives on the appropriate web sites gave me the 3 years for WD and 5 years for Seagate (and the stock drive coming back as not under warranty as expected since it is covered by Apple).

cheers.