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Which Hard drive?

N

newkeyboard

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 30, 2007
154
0
Sussex, UK
Hi Guys,


I'm looking to add some drives to my mac pro (early 2008). which would you go for of these two. I think I'm right that the WD is highly recommended but noticed the similar spec seagate (new?). Is the extra cache worth the money?


Cheers,

Jonathan


WESTERN DIGITAL HD Caviar SE/640GB SATA II 7200rpm:

http://misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=304214&CatId=3097

SEAGATE HD Cuda 7200.11/640GB 3.5'' SATA 7200rpm32:


http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=320065&CatId=3097
 
I personally use Western Digital because my local computer store can sell them to me for cost price.

I have never had a problem with WD and would recommend them anytime.
 
I'm a fan of the Western Digital drives too. I have 3 different WD drives and so far I haven't been let down.
 
Thanks for the responses.

I am swaying towards the wd drive as it's cheaper for the same amount of storage. What I really need to know is if the 32mb cache of the seagate will help to speed things up over the 16 of the Western (especially saving/opening large multilayer photoshop files)?
 
newkeyboard said:
Thanks for the responses.

I am swaying towards the wd drive as it's cheaper for the same amount of storage. What I really need to know is if the 32mb cache of the seagate will help to speed things up over the 16 of the Western (especially saving/opening large multilayer photoshop files)?
Click to expand...

The cache size makes no difference, it's a marketing gimmick.
 
Okay it looks like the WD drive is the one to go for. Unless someone can chime in with some love for the seagate? It's a green drive , not sure how much a of a benefit that is?
 
I prefer Seagate due to the 5 year warranty. Personal opinion though. I'd go for what is cheaper and quieter.
 
I have a samsung 1tb in the 1st slot, with 50/50 osx/vista 64, a wd black 1tb in the 4th slot for time machine, and a wd 750 in the 3rd for ps4, fcp scratch, and the apple supplied seagate 320 in slot 2 with vista 32

i liked the samsung, it is fast and fairly quiet. the wd black is fast as well. i usually go with wd but found the samsung 1tb at owc for 119 and that was too good to pass up.

i have seen some reviews on the wd green that they are a little slower as they seem to run at 5400 more then they do at 7200.


I'd vote for samsung.
 
Another + for the WD 640GB drive. I notice no difference between it and the 150GB Raptor drive it replaced as far as performance goes, though it is far quieter.

kabelabs said:
i have seen some reviews on the wd green that they are a little slower as they seem to run at 5400 more then they do at 7200.
Click to expand...
The WD Green Power drives run at 5400 rpm (at-least the WD10EACS do), it was the marketing stuff that said that drives in the Green Power range would have speeds between 5400 and 7200. That said I can't be happier with my 3 WD GP 1TB drives, cool, quiet and fast enough for storing media and backups.
 
My MP came with a 320GB Seagate, it's the hottest and loudest drive in my machine. I'm running a 500GB WD Green for Time Machine (speed not an issue so much) and it's 2nd hottest even though it doesn't do much but the hourly backups. It's quiet though.

Bays 3 and 4 are 1TB Samsung F1 drives, coolest (about 77-80F under load) and I never hear them. Without any actual speed testing other than just observation, they appear to be much quicker too.
 
I've had 5-7 WD drives fail on us at my work over the past year. 4 of them were WD 500GB drives in a RAID 10 setup, so thankfully, no data was lost as they all failed at different times and the array was always rebuildable, but man, not cool.

Other than the 500GB drives that were replaced under warranty, we've had numerous other WD drives fail as well, usually smaller capacities. That said, we've been buying Seagate since our slew of WD drives failing and have not had a single problem - I'll be sticking with Seagate from here on out.
 
The WD6400AAKS which you listed is a fine drive. I have 3 in a striped set running in my MacPro for a week nice and they are pretty quick and quiet.

The Samsung F1 1TB HD103UJ that some others have mentioned are also quite nice. It is slightly quieter than the WD, from my experience, and runs a bit cooler. It is also quick but doesn't seem to be as fast as the WDs except perhaps on larger files. I'm using two of those now for media streaming (one for backup).

The original Seagate from my MacPro is terribly loud. I am currently using it for clones of my OS partitions only. I was able to quiet it somewhat (had a terrible constant high pitch ringing) by adding some silicon grommets that I cut in half and added between the screws (been doing this on all the HDs I install in my Pro now). Doesn't mean they don't make good drives, this particular one is just not my cup of tea. I think you'll find that most of the manufacturers have some goods drives and some not so good ones. The 5 year warranty is, of course, a plus, as another noted on the Seagates, though.

I also agree with that you won't notice any difference due to cache size.

Here's a good link that swayed me to the WD drives Western Digital 640GB
versus other 7K SATA drives
 
I would like to give one more vote for the
WD 640GB AAKS:)

I asked the same advice as you back in July. Everybody said to go for the WD
I'm very pleased with it's speed and overall performance.
I now use it as my boot drive. Much faster than the stock drive that came with with the mac pro.
 
Samsung F1's are one of the best drives on the market.

I've got a 750GB drive in my computer at the moment and just ordered another 1TB drive this morning. Can't recommend them enough :). Much better than the Seagate I had (which has now been relegated to being my Vista drive).
 
I'm STILL running a 4GB WD drive in a G3 that has 12 hour work days every day of the week (That's from 1999!).

Besides that I've got one in a G4 from 2001, still works. And a Compaq from 2000 has another oldy. The two WD drives that my PC array is using are almost two years old with no issues.

Very pleased with WD. Really, the only brand I would shy away from is Maxtor.
 
I just wanted to add to my previous suggestion on the WD640GbAAKS.

One of the reasons they are so good at being reliable and quiet. Is that they use only two 320GB platers to achieve the 640GB. compared to say the samsung f1 which uses three 250GB platers to make 740GB.

2 platers spinning at high speeds. Is going to be quieter and more reliable then 3 platers. The difference is only 80GB

Look here
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3236&cp=3
 
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