RAID Questions - 5400 vs 7200 RPM?

[deknk12]

I'm putting together a second RAID 1 setup as I've filled my first 1TB mirrored RAID (LaCie) with photos and videos. I'm a freelance photographer and these drives hold my livelihood so RAID 0 is out of the question.

I've picked my RAID enclosure (NewerTech Guardian Maximus) but found it's cheaper to buy my own bare drives and put it together myself.

I found a great deal on 2TB WD Green Drives with 64mb cache and 3Gbps SATA but then realized they are 5400/5900 RPM drives. This is mostly for storage of my RAW files that I read/edit using Lightroom in addition to storage of video files that are edited etc via FCP.

I'm on a 2010 15" MBP which means eSATA is out and I'll be using FW800. While out of the question from the start, I realize that buying 10,000 RPM, 64mb cache, 6Gbps SATA drives is silly because they'll be limited by the throughout of FW800.

So, keeping in mind that FW800 is the limiting factor, do I need 7200 RPM drives? 64mb cache? 3 or 6Gbps SATA?

Thanks in advance!

-Dave

 

[Zenoff64]

WD Green drives don't raid correctly due to the power saving features. Go for either scorpio blue or the black label drives.

 

[nwroberts]

Seagate

Personally I have nothing but bad experiences with Western Digital. I suggest Seagate. From a "Consumer" grade standpoint, the Barracuda® XT 3.5" Internal Kitted Drive is great. Otherwise if you want server grade the Seagate Constellation brand is excellent as well.

 

[marc11]

WD Green drives don't raid correctly due to the power saving features. Go for either scorpio blue or the black label drives.

I'm running a MyBook WD raid with two 1tb green drives and it works perfectly for me.

 

[vincenz]

Personally I have nothing but bad experiences with Western Digital. I suggest Seagate. From a "Consumer" grade standpoint, the Barracuda® XT 3.5" Internal Kitted Drive is great. Otherwise if you want server grade the Seagate Constellation brand is excellent as well.

Me too. I don't understand all the praise and 5-star reviews on Newegg on the Western Digital drives at all.