Seagate video HDD?

[jbarley]

I've come across a couple of 500GB seagate video HDDs and wonder if they could be (are safe) to use in my Mac Pro3,1?
Disk Utility had no problem initializing and formatting them to Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
I'm only curious because it's the first time I've heard of these drives.

 

[Alex Sanders74]

Do you have the model numbers for these? Never heard of video HDD's unless they have much larger cache on them. Should be on the top label of the case. I would think most SATA drives are good to go, but it would be helpful to know the model #.

Seems like they have a low rotational speed of 5900rpm and a large 64Mb cache... Most high performance platter drives are 7200rpm like the WD Blacks and Barracuda drives, but these should work fine. The low rotational speeds are not ideal as platter drives, even 7200rpm are incapable of high read/write speeds compared to the connectors on the MacPro. Depends on what you're using them for. If it's for an OS, I'd suggest an SSD. If they're for storage, it will just take longer to save/open files.

 

[AidenShaw]

I've come across a couple of 500GB seagate video HDDs and wonder if they could be (are safe) to use in my Mac Pro3,1?
Disk Utility had no problem initializing and formatting them to Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
I'm only curious because it's the first time I've heard of these drives.

Might not be safe if you like your data.

"Video" drives typically have most error recovery features disabled.

Error recovery takes time, and if the drive stops to recover from a transient error the video streaming (reading or writing) can be broken. In CCTV recording or video server applications this can be a big deal.

"Video" drives simply write or read garbage when errors occur. The error might be unnoticeable (for example if one subpixel in one frame is off), or insignificant (a few tens or hundreds of KiB of garbage might cause a minor flicker or glitch).

500 GB 3.5" drives are in the under $50 price bracket - don't risk your data using video drives.

But check the data sheets to be sure.

 

[jbarley]

Thanks for the info, exactly what I needed to know.