Question before ordering from OWC

I might say but the HDD through Newegg instead ?

the other stuff from OWC though


your bay 3 dump stuff ? are you going to back this up ? or is it stuff you can loose and you wont miss it ?

 

when you say
Bay 1: 1TB Caviar Black 64mb HDD

whats the 64mb HDD for

got to finish a big job ASAP so will be back to answer more

how much data total do you have or need to have on disc ?

 

It's 64MB of cache.

 

The Apple's 1TB disk is usually the Caviar Black. It is one off the fastest consumer drives. The Green series are low voltage, 5400 RPM drives. All are SATA II 3Gb/sec except the WD1002FAEX which is SATA II 6Gb/sec. Since the Mac Pro has only SATA II and the drives maximum throughput are below 150MB/sec that does not matter for you.

The Green drives are much slower than the regular drives. Follows the list with current NewEgg prices (shipping is not included and some of them are free).

ECO drives:
Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EARS 1TB 64MB Cache -Bare Drive $70
Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB 32MB Cache -Bare Drive $80
Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EADS 2TB 64MB Cache -Bare Drive $130

7200 RPM drives:
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache -Bare Drive $88
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 64MB Cache 6.0Gb/s -Bare $90
HITACHI Deskstar H3IK20003272SP (0S02861) 2TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache $130
HITACHI Deskstar HDS722020ALA330 (0F10311) 2TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache -Bare Drive $130
Western Digital Caviar Black WD2001FASS 2TB 7200 RPM -Bare Drive $180

I would go with all drives of the same kind. Either the Blacks or the Hitachi. If one fails you have many options to replace while getting a new one, or even have
an extra as spare.

For comparisons go to: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-3.5-desktop-hard-drive-charts/benchmarks,50.html
The Blacks are faster than the Hitachi. The Hitachi 2TB is a very good deal.

Your best setup would be 1 OWC or OCZ Vertex 2 SSD as boot + applications drive and Apple supplied 1TB drive (WD Black) + 2 Hitachi 2TB or 2 WD Black (1TB or 2TB). If you decide to skip the SSD for now then add 3 of the same drives.

The HDD slots are all the same for the Mac Pro. There is no difference between them.

You could setup a RAID 0 with 2 drives for scratch and files that have to be accessed fast. Another one to backup your important data with Time Machine and one for your system with lots of space for other stuff.

RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks) is a technique to use a set of (similar) disks as a logical one. Essentially the disks can be combined for more speed or for redundancy or a mix of both.

RAID0 is for speed and no redundancy. 2 or more disks are joined and every file is striped over all disks in the set. If you have n disks the reading and writing throughput is multiplied by n. It can be implemented by software as is in OS X. If the disks are of different sizes they consider all to be of the smallest size. If one drive fails, the contains of the whole set is lost. So if you want RADI0 for performance, better have all your important data backup to another disk.

RAID1 is meant for redundancy. 2 or more disks are joined and every file is replicated over all disks. The write speed is as of one disk, but the reading can be multiplied by the number of disks in certain restricted circumstances.

RAID0+1 and RAID1+0 combination of the above techniques. OS X supports 1+0.

There are other RAID levels but in the Mac Pro only with a RAID controller card.
The RAID5 is the best alternative, it sustains 1 drive failure and provides n-1 increase in throughput.

Using SSDs in RAID0 is highly recommended since the SSDs have not moving parts the probability of failure is way lower than standard HDD. For maximum performance you should get 2 SSDs in RAID0 for your boot drive containing OS X, applications and scratch space for applications that requires frequent and fast disk access.

For detailed info on RAIDs see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

PS: I am not a native english speaker, so sorry for any bad wording.

 

isn't it bad practice to buy the same type/brand/batch of hard drives?

 

AHHH that makes sense now hehehe could not figure that out for a moment never thought to put that down

 

just a couple thoughts ?

the raid 1+0 or 0+1 its good to note never do 0+1 not saying the OP was saying to do this he was just pointing it out
but just good info to know


the other part of raid 0 for boot ? I disagree with boot in raid 0 has been shown many times to not be that big of gains ?
and pointing your scratch to your boot is not the best ? while some do this ? their are better ways ?
if I had two SSD one for boot the other for cache/scratch you will get better performance ? this is from my own testing with LR and PS

I tried raid 0 boot scratch and it was slower than single discs in each configuration

also boot is a luxury ? yes its nice and might be good ? if you launch and relaunch a ton of applications all day long ? I tend to only have a dozen or so open and they tend to stay open

also depending on size ? if your scratch fills up you can choke out your OS a bit ?

 

YES & NO

many have theories if you are buying for raid its best to have them the same

I prefer if one is for BU and one is for storage to break them up though ?
so really depends on useage ?

I have 17 of the same HDDs for two 8 disc raids ? one is a spare but its in use ? I figure load some longer term stuff on it family pics and such then it sits their if I need it I have it ?

my time machine box uses Hitachi I also have WD in another box and seagate in another ?
not by intention to pick those brands but by choice of the HDDs at the time

 

Buying the same type/brand is fine...

Same batch, possibly not. If you buy the same batch then if one of the drives fail, there's a higher chance that the others will as well since they were manufactured/packaged/whatever at the same time.

Some people go out of their way to buy their drives from different places or different times because of the above.