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some hard drive help please?

I

itsjustmeee

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 28, 2008
603
7
I need to get more disk space in my Mac Pro for my ever-growing Pro Tools sample library. Obviously since I'll be accessing and streaming large samples, performance is a priority. I'm leaning towards the Caviar Black 1tb. Is there any difference at all in performance when it comes to the size of a drive? Is the 1.5 or 2tb faster or have any advantages/disadvantages besides storage capacity?

Any other drives I should be looking at??

Is there really THAT big of a difference between the Black and Blue drives or the purpose I'll be using it for?

Thanks.
 
itsjustmeee said:
I need to get more disk space in my Mac Pro for my ever-growing Pro Tools sample library. Obviously since I'll be accessing and streaming large samples, performance is a priority. I'm leaning towards the Caviar Black 1tb. Is there any difference at all in performance when it comes to the size of a drive? Is the 1.5 or 2tb faster or have any advantages/disadvantages besides storage capacity?
Click to expand...
There are two primary factors when considering performance of HDDs: rotation speed and density. A 2TB 7200 rpm drive will generally be faster than a 500MB 7200 rpm drive, due to higher density. Of course, you should compare specs of any two drives, as performance can vary. Drive noise can also be a consideration.
 
Booting of a OCZ Vertex 3 240GB drive and use 3 1TB WD caviar blacks to create a 3TB scary raid (raid 0)

My aperture library, final cut project and so on that raid. works great and is snappy.
 
Lance-AR said:
You are the target customer of the caviar blacks. How much space are you looking for and how many drive bays are you looking to fill?
Click to expand...

I use 2 of the 4 bays for samples. Right now I have two 500 gig drives filled up and I'm getting another program next week that is 300 + gigs of samples and comes shipped on a Caviar Blue. I do realize that I have to weigh performance with drive noise. This is a home studio and my Mac Pro is about 15 feet away from me. That is why I was initially leaning towards the 1tb Black but if a larger drive actually performs better, a tb blue might be a better all around choice. Either way, I'll be replacing both of my older 500 gig drives with 2 of what ever I choose, so once again noise might be a factor since there will be 2 of them constantly working.

Update. I believe that the Blue is not available in 2tb .... only 1tb and 3tb.
 
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I think I'll go with the Caviar Black 1.5TB. I've read in various forums that the 64 MB version is actually a louder drive than the 32 but it looks like they've stopped making the 32 MB cache version. Has anyone here experienced that?
 
Velociraptor 1TB. Bit pricey, but no where near ssd. Very fast... (fits rails)
 
itsjustmeee said:
I think I'll go with the Caviar Black 1.5TB. I've read in various forums that the 64 MB version is actually a louder drive than the 32 but it looks like they've stopped making the 32 MB cache version. Has anyone here experienced that?
Click to expand...

what are you looking for speed or sound? if you want it silent get some green drives. if you need speed get the blacks.

Going for something slower is kinda contradicting to what you want to do..
 
BenClement1978 said:
what are you looking for speed or sound? if you want it silent get some green drives. if you need speed get the blacks.

Going for something slower is kinda contradicting to what you want to do..
Click to expand...

I ended up getting two 1.5 gig black caviar 64 drives. For the application I'm using it for, it seemed to be the best choice (other than biting the bullet and going for an ssd.)
 
itsjustmeee said:
I ended up getting two 1.5 gig black caviar 64 drives. For the application I'm using it for, it seemed to be the best choice (other than biting the bullet and going for an ssd.)
Click to expand...

well depending on for big your projects are. raw uncompressed video is quite big so that is why i did not go the ssd route.
 
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