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Recommend me a new hard drive for my Mac Pro?

I

Ivo10

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 23, 2008
20
0
I'm looking to add a new Hard Drive to my 2009 Mac Pro.

1. What is the best place to buy one?

Currently I'm looking on Newegg.com and here's how I've narrowed it down so far:

Capacity: 2TB, Interface: SATA 3.0GB/s, RPM: 7200.

That search yield 12 results! Here's a LINK

2. Which brand would you recommend?

3. What would your pick be of the 12 results?

Thanks for your time!
 
The HITACHI 0F10452 is an enterprise level drive and should provide years of trouble-free service. (If you purchese the 20-pack, one of your selections, you'll be able to sell the remainder to your friends at a slight mark-up and get your drive for free :)
 
Haha, if I could afford that initial purchase that would work quite nicely!

Do you know what comes stock with the Mac Pros? I'm pretty sure it might be WD.
 
How is the OP using the drive? Is there an advantage to getting the WDRE4 over the Caviar Black if you are not running a hardware RAID?

I got 2 Mac Pros this year. One uses the Apple Pro Raid Card; I have 4 x 2TB WDRE4 drives in a RAID 0 array in that box (backups are in 2 external RAID 5 boxes, both also with 4 x 2TB WDRE4 drives). The other Mac has 4 x 2 TB Caviar Black drives. Because it has 2 drives in a SOFTWARE RAID and the others as separate backups I didn't believe I needed to shell out extra money for the "enterprise" drives.

I am not a Mac expert, but from what I have read, the significant extra cost of the WDRE4 "enterprise" over the Caviar black "consumer" isn't usually justified unless you are using the drive in hardware RAID. Both drives have a 5-year warranty and are very well reviewed.
 
to answer the first question, there is no "best" place...I shop around at Amazon, SuperBiiz, TigerDirect, and Newegg.
 
Thanks for the replies!

I do not plan on running RAID with any of the drives. Can anyone confirm that there is no advantage to the WDRE4 if you are not going to be using RAID?

ycookmd said:
How is the OP using the drive? Is there an advantage to getting the WDRE4 over the Caviar Black if you are not running a hardware RAID?

I got 2 Mac Pros this year. One uses the Apple Pro Raid Card; I have 4 x 2TB WDRE4 drives in a RAID 0 array in that box (backups are in 2 external RAID 5 boxes, both also with 4 x 2TB WDRE4 drives). The other Mac has 4 x 2 TB Caviar Black drives. Because it has 2 drives in a SOFTWARE RAID and the others as separate backups I didn't believe I needed to shell out extra money for the "enterprise" drives.

I am not a Mac expert, but from what I have read, the significant extra cost of the WDRE4 "enterprise" over the Caviar black "consumer" isn't usually justified unless you are using the drive in hardware RAID. Both drives have a 5-year warranty and are very well reviewed.
Click to expand...
 
The stock drives that came with 2009 MPs were 640 WD Blue drives, @7200rpm, 16MB cache... something like this.

For a new drive, it depends... if your are looking for fast and large capacity drives, the WD Blacks seem to be among the favorites for boot and/or scratch drives - the only complaint is noise in most of the cases. If you want pure speed, the go with SSD. I've gotten great results form the Samsung F3 drives: they are really fast, quiet and remain quite cool.

cheers!
 
Thanks for the replies!

I do not plan on running RAID with any of the drives. Can anyone confirm that there is no advantage to the WDRE4 if you are not going to be using RAID?
Click to expand...

It's pointless to buy an RE4 if you're not using it for server and/or RAID applications. If you don't need constant 24/7 uptime with frequent disk access, Caviar Blacks are fine and offer identical performance.

diazj3 said:
The stock drives that came with 2009 MPs were 640 WD Blue drives, @7200rpm, 16MB cache... something like this.
Click to expand...

Actually, that's not always the case. My friend's 2009 Mac Pro shipped with a 1TB Caviar Black. I've seen others ship with Seagate drives. Supplier and model varies.
 
ycookmd said:
How is the OP using the drive? Is there an advantage to getting the WDRE4 over the Caviar Black if you are not running a hardware RAID?

I am not a Mac expert, but from what I have read, the significant extra cost of the WDRE4 "enterprise" over the Caviar black "consumer" isn't usually justified unless you are using the drive in hardware RAID. Both drives have a 5-year warranty and are very well reviewed.
Click to expand...

If you're running a hardware RAID, RE edition drives are very recommended because they have TLER enabled by default. Earlier Black and Green drives support TLER as well, newer drives unfortunately don't.
For a software RAID, every drive is just fine, no need for enterprise grade drives.

diazj3 said:
The stock drives that came with 2009 MPs were 640 WD Blue drives, @7200rpm, 16MB cache... something like this.
Click to expand...

The 640GB drive in my Pro was a Black drive. Some people also received Hitachi or Seagate drives.
 
I picked the most expensive wd Re4 2tb quality hdd for a very simple reason. In the future you can go to raid with ease. You have a 2000 dollar piece of gear. Yeah you can chisel and buy a 110 dollar 2tb samsung very fast good hdd and down the road if you want to go to raid it is more risky it also has a 3 year warranty vs 5.
WD cavair black 2 tb are really good hdds but they are a little noisier. If you were buying 4 drives and no raid in sight I would tell you buy the cheaper hdds. You only want one drive so I suggested buy the premium one.

Another thing I buy and sell and use 100's of hdds. Western digital is the gold standard of warranties. When the drive arrives you go to the website and register it this insures that the warranty is good. They accept and handle rma's in the usa so much better then any other company . Also a little know fact is if your hdd is no longer available but still under warranty you get an upgraded hdd.
 
Last edited:
CaptainChunk said:
It's pointless to buy an RE4 if you're not using it for server and/or RAID applications. If you don't need constant 24/7 uptime with frequent disk access, Caviar Blacks are fine and offer identical performance.
Click to expand...

By 24/7 uptime are you referring to a drive never going to sleep? Sometimes when I'm working in Final Cut or Pro Tools I have to stop for a few seconds and wait for the beachball to go away - I believe this is because the drive is waking up? Would be nice to not have to deal with that, although probably not worth the price difference. Thoughts?
 
Ivo10 said:
By 24/7 uptime are you referring to a drive never going to sleep? Sometimes when I'm working in Final Cut or Pro Tools I have to stop for a few seconds and wait for the beachball to go away - I believe this is because the drive is waking up? Would be nice to not have to deal with that, although probably not worth the price difference. Thoughts?
Click to expand...

That's an energy saver settings in the OSX preferences, put harddrives to sleep when possible (or such) ; tick the box off for that kind of work.

The 24/7 uptime is about constant access to the HDDs, like in a server setting or a render farm ; in that case server/enterprise grade HDDs are preferable.
 
CaptainChunk said:
Actually, that's not always the case. My friend's 2009 Mac Pro shipped with a 1TB Caviar Black. I've seen others ship with Seagate drives. Supplier and model varies.
Click to expand...

WD 640GB Blues were the case for the original basic configuration on 2009 MPs regarding HDs. Check the specs. 1&2 TB WD Blacks and Seagates were BTO. But perhaps some lucky ones got 1TB drives by exception - I seem to recall sometime before releasing the 2010 models, they bumped the drives a bit - or some got those drives in refurbished machines.... but anyway... the easiest thing would be for the OP to check the drive that came with his machine.
 
Thanks for the responses everyone! With your help, I've decided to go with a 2Tb WD Caviar Black
 
diazj3 said:
WD 640GB Blues were the case for the original basic configuration on 2009 MPs regarding HDs. Check the specs.
Click to expand...


Again, my 2009 Pro shipped with a 640GB WD Black! And the document you linked doesn't say anything about the drives manufacturer.

Apple uses whatever drives are available, which is why manufacturer and type vary.
CaptainChunk is totally right.
 
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