Which Hard Drive for my MacPro?

[cmcconkey]

I have a 2x2Ghz MacPro and I am looking to get another internal HD for it. This computer is used for minor photo editing (Photoshop), scanning and would also be used as an Extensis Portfolio catalog station. I am going to need a fast, quick and reliable hard drive. This drive will hold only the catalog files and original files for Portfolio, the catch is that we have already backed up some of our photography to cd (700+ full cds). I know that this wouldn't make much of a dent in a large drive as a catalog file alone but I want lots of room to grow. If you need to know any more information please don't hesitate to ask.


Thanks in advance

Christopher

 

[synth3tik]

any SATA will work. some HDs have 8mb cache some have 16 and some are even coming out at 32. Of course the more cache you have the faster it can (theoretically) read and write.

My HD set up is
2X150G WD 10k Raptors RAID 0 as system drive
2X500G Seagate 7.2k RAID 0 Media drive.

It works well for me, don't know if you are looking for that much space. For the most part it is a really fast drive set up.

 

[cmcconkey]

Does anyone know of any brands that I should stay away from? I have found this one. I believe that a 7200 RPM would do the trick for me. I also don't believe that a RAID would be too beneficial for me either.

Does anyone have any experience with this model?

 

[cokersa]

I haven't used the 750GB version, but in the last month I put in two of the 320GB versions of the WD SATA 300 7200 RPM 16MB Cache drives into my Mac Pro (backup drives for my two boot drives for Leopard and Vista). I haven't had any issue, and I think they are relatively quiet and fast. Certainly WAY faster than backing up your files onto CDs or DVDs.

RAID is great if you need higher performance on read/write, and/or redundancy in the case of a disk failure (depending on the version of RAID you are using). However, RAID does nothing to help you if you accidentally deleted something you didn't want to. Since I don't need the performance enhancements of RAID, I prefer just to use the additional disks for backups (which DO help if you accidentally delete something you didn't mean to). Disks are relatively cheap these days, so I think they are the best way to backup your files - you just need a large enough backup disk to support all of your data (and even larger if you want to create multiple snapshots over time).

I can speak from experience - you don't want to be cussing yourself for having been too cheap to buy the insurance of a sufficiently large backup disk. Otherwise you may spend days recreating a bunch of information you lost (like I did in November when a key file was corrupted, before I bought my two backup drives), or you've just lost the data and it can never be recovered.

 

[musicforme]

I plan on going with a Seagate Barracuda once I get a Pro at the next refresh. The warranty on these drives is five years which is longer than most of the other manufacturers.

 

[jabrowntx]

Does anyone have any experience with this model?

I just purchased that very one from Newegg and haven't had any problems. I've had two 400 gig drives from the same product line since day 1 of my Mac Pro and haven't had problems from either one of them (my Mac is about 6 months old).

 

[diddykiddy]

be careful with RAID !

A word of caution . . .

I would think carefully about using RAID 0.

look at what the different raid levels mean -

I would recommend getting two identical HD's - maybe WD Caviar 500Gbs and using RAID 1 (Mirroring). You then get a fast, redundant HDD setup. Have a look at toms hardware to see tests of different drives. [URL="http://http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/3-5-desktop-hard-disk-charts/workstation-i-o-benchmark-pattern,34.html"]

Buying the slightly more expensive models with 5yr warranty is probably a good move.

Using RAID 0 is risky, if one of the drives goes down you lose BOTH DRIVES and ALL YOUR DATA !!.

The best reasonable setup is RAID 5 - which has greater redundancy but you need more drives ! If you want a really quick boot drive you could do a lot worse than a Western Digital 150Gb Raptor (10,000rpm).

best of luck !

diddy

 

[Mr.Noisy]

Does anyone have any experience with this model?

This is the 750gb version of my 4 x WD5000AAKS Drives (500gb), Quiet, fast and reliable, no problems at all, any of the big name SATA II drives will be ok but try to get at least 16mb cache, good luck