I am planning to add (2) internal hard drives to my Mac Pro. The question I have is... what Brands are people having the best luck with? Comments/Recommendations welcome...
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What Hard Drive 4 Mac Pro?
- Thread starter AFMRPCUSER
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On another thread about the noise a Mac Pro makes some said it was silent, some said they could hear the drives.
Looks like it depends on the quality of the drive it it's a noisy drive or a silent drive.
Which drives are silent?
Looks like it depends on the quality of the drive it it's a noisy drive or a silent drive.
Which drives are silent?
Hello,
As long as you stick to the first biggest brand names (Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate, WD), specs are more important.
Get a 7200 drive, ideally 64mb of cache, and check for noise if it's important for you.
Then look for deals, as prices can vary a LOT!
Loa
As long as you stick to the first biggest brand names (Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate, WD), specs are more important.
Get a 7200 drive, ideally 64mb of cache, and check for noise if it's important for you.
Then look for deals, as prices can vary a LOT!
Loa
Well, if you can afford it, a SSD drive would be the fastest, and obviously the quietest. I just put a Crucial RealSSD 128GB drive in as my boot drive and it has made a phenomenal difference in the performance of my Late 2008 Mac Pro. Boots up in 30 seconds instead on 1min. Programs load like lightening. Very happy so far.
Even the 150GB Velocirator's wouldn't be the best though, as their prices are close enough to the 80GB Intel G2 SSD's it's foolish. For a few bucks more ($190 vs. 212USD), performance wise, the SSD makes better sense as boot drive.I would suggest a small raptor (10,000rpm) for your main boot drive, then a huge drive for storage (>1TB).
Loa, you do know that 7200rpm is standard for 3.5" drives, right??
Now if it's meant for a high write environment, then the Velociraptor would have the advantage IMO.
My Reply 2 U
I have considered SSD because of the R/W times but I believe I will wait as they improve them... and begin to offer them is larger memory capacities. Like most computer equipment faster more powerful means just waiting a couple of years. The sooner we distance ourselves from mechanical drives the faster the computer business will go. Thank you for your rapid reply.
I have considered SSD because of the R/W times but I believe I will wait as they improve them... and begin to offer them is larger memory capacities. Like most computer equipment faster more powerful means just waiting a couple of years. The sooner we distance ourselves from mechanical drives the faster the computer business will go. Thank you for your rapid reply.
That advice is at least 2 years old. As others have said, a SSD boot drive will perform head and shoulders above a 10,000 drive. Not even a possible comparison.
As for 7200 being standard, it's the same thing: it used to be true. These days, there are 2 standards: 7200, and the green drives 5900.
Some people will be tempted to put the much cheaper 5900 in their Mac Pros, and I advised the OP against that (unless it's for a back-up drive).
AFMRPCUSER: if you wait a couple of years before buying a SSD, you'll have to live with 2 consequences. First, you'll have a much slower computer for a couple of years then you could have had. Second, in a couple of years, there may be a new technology that will be like SSDs are today. Why get a Mac Pro if you don't want the best technology and performance?
SSDs, although still young compared to mechanical HDs, are already in their second generation (maybe third if the new new top-of-the-line sandforces deliver what they promise).
I can't think of a single reason not to use a SSD as boot drive in a Mac Pro.
Loa
So an ideal Mac Pro setup for someone doing [very] short videos and needing high data security would be:
Drive 1: (Boot) SSD
Drive 2: (Video Media) SSD
Drive 3: (Boot Time Machine) any 7200 drive from a solid vendor
Drive 4: (Video Media Backup) any 7200 drive from a solid vendor
Sound like a good plan?
Drive 1: (Boot) SSD
Drive 2: (Video Media) SSD
Drive 3: (Boot Time Machine) any 7200 drive from a solid vendor
Drive 4: (Video Media Backup) any 7200 drive from a solid vendor
Sound like a good plan?
As I've said elsewhere, right now the best way to get both very high performance while still having lots of drive space is this:
A SSD as boot drive (without user data) and a 4 disk RAID0 in the 4 mac pro bays. You put the SSD in the second optical bay and get at least 1 external drive for back-up.
Even with four relatively cheap enterprise-grade 500GB drives (like WD's RE.3s or Seagates' ES.12), you get 2TB of incredibly fast (about 3 to 4 times as fast as a single 7200 2TB drive) data inside your Mac, with a ridiculously fast SSD for your OS.
I've yet to see a faster compromise (unless you're ready to shell out for 1TB SSDs!!!).
Loa
I have considered SSD because of the R/W times but I believe I will wait as they improve them... and begin to offer them is larger memory capacities. Like most computer equipment faster more powerful means just waiting a couple of years. The sooner we distance ourselves from mechanical drives the faster the computer business will go. Thank you for your rapid reply.
Well. Crucial also makes a 256GB model. Of course it's quite expensive. I have the 128GB as my boot drive and have 3 other internal drives for storage as well as a 1TB external drive for all of my media files. I felt like I got a new computer after I put in the SSD. But they will certainly get cheaper and faster. I've been waiting for years myself to get one. I decided it was time to pull the trigger.
If you're looking for good price and great storage, I would look at western digital caviar green. The prices are really good, great company, and up to 2tb. The only downside is that the rpm isn't a constant 7200, it uses energy saver "technology" to determine speed, anywhere from 5900-7200. So it can go at 7200 rpm, but won't stay that way forever. Seems like a good drive to have as a time machine backup drive because you don't need that to be uber fast but has great capacity.
There's evidence to contradict that though. It seems they're actually fixed at ~5900 RPM, not variable.
If you think about it, it actually makes sense when you look at the price. Variable speed tech would be more expensive to produce (more complicated firmware and spindle motor), yet the drives are less expensive than their 7200 fixed RPM counterparts (same capacity).
No, not at all, and the Green drives are wonderfully inexpensive for larger capacities. Which is ideal for backups.
Apologies for thread-jacking with my own question, but I thought this would best suit here.
I have a December 2006 Mac Pro and I'm looking at getting a new hard drive for it - is there a "maximum storage" that the mac pro can handle? I heard a rumour that it can't read the drives properly when the total exceeds 3Tb - is this the case?
Currently I have:
Main HD: 500gb
2nd Bay: 1.5Tb
3rd Bay: 160Gb
4th Bay: 750Gb
Looking at replacing Main HD due to age and it's beginning to act up a bit. Although having read through the thread I'm tempted by SSD, but I was just wondering what my options are regarding size of HD's.
Cheers
S
I have a December 2006 Mac Pro and I'm looking at getting a new hard drive for it - is there a "maximum storage" that the mac pro can handle? I heard a rumour that it can't read the drives properly when the total exceeds 3Tb - is this the case?
Currently I have:
Main HD: 500gb
2nd Bay: 1.5Tb
3rd Bay: 160Gb
4th Bay: 750Gb
Looking at replacing Main HD due to age and it's beginning to act up a bit. Although having read through the thread I'm tempted by SSD, but I was just wondering what my options are regarding size of HD's.
Cheers
S
Personally I have not heard anything like that and head that it's fine with up to 8tb, but I could be wrong.
No.
The max drive capacity is whatever the largest currently manufactured is (currently 2TB). And it changes each time a larger drive is released.
I've been running a WD 150 GB Raptor for a couple of years - noisy, some vibration, over rated regardless of what the reviews report from their tests.
Going forward, I would concur with SSD for boot and apps - not for storing HD video though !!!
Samsung SPINPOINT F3s will probably be my next purchase.
Going forward, I would concur with SSD for boot and apps - not for storing HD video though !!!
Samsung SPINPOINT F3s will probably be my next purchase.
No, not at all, and the Green drives are wonderfully inexpensive for larger capacities. Which is ideal for backups.
All drives these days are "wonderfully inexpensive". Does it really matter if a 1000 GB drive costs $80 or $120? Either way, they're ridiculously cheap.
I remember paying over $1000 for a ~700 MB (not GB) CDC drive a while back. Going back further, it cost me many hundreds of dollars (I forget exact amount) for an approx 10 MB (not GB) Tandon Magnetics drive. Sad to say, these older drives (and quite a few others) are still collecting dust somewhere around the house.
Does it really matter if a car costs $30000 or $45000?
50% is 50%, regardless of the fact that the price is low compared to 10 years back.
And personally, I absolutely don't see the point of wasting 50% more money for a drive that does not need to be fast because the environment it is used in will never max out its speed.
40 bucks won't hurt for a single drive, but lets say you need 4, 8 or 16 drives! Still not hurting?
$40 on it's own may not be that much to some, but those on a fixed budget, it usually is.
But what I was actually getting to, is multiple drives needed for backups (or RAID), so the cost differences are multiplied by n units. So if n = 24, and the difference is $40, do the math: $960USD isn't negligible. Not to an individual, nor to enteprise customers in the current economy (where n may be much larger).