Adding an Internal HD to MacPro. Anyone have any recommendations?

[arainert]

Hi there,

Just got a Mac Pro and I wanted to add a 250-400 GB Internal drive. Anyone have any they recommend?

Thanks!

alex

 

[jsw]

Here's an option... and there are others as well. You can get 320GB for under $100 and, at the right times, 400GB for under $100.

 

[arainert]

Great - so these will slide right into the internal enclosures on the Mac Pro?

Why am I always made skeptical of things that are priced so well

 

[Mundy]

STAY AWAY from the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10! These drives are exhibiting a firmware conflict that, under OS X, causes horrible random write speeds. I know, because I had to RMA two of them back to NewEgg this morning.

Seagate has acknowledged the problem, but doesn't have a fix. It has been covered in some depth by both Barefeats.com and Xlr8yourmac.com, but unfortunately I didn't know about it until after I ordered the drives.

I went ahead and decided to benchmark the ones I received, and sure enough, they scored almost fifty points lower (!) in Xbench than my Western Digital RE2 drives. The problem was random reads and writes. Even in a striped configuration (RAID 0), the drives were slower than a single Western Digital RE2. I'm not saying that the RE2s are that much faster. I'm saying that something is wrong with the 7200.10.

If you're going to use the drive in a PC, the 7200.10 seems to be a great choice. But until Seagate gets their firmware issues straightened out, I would stay away from this drive under OS X.

 

[arainert]

Thanks for the tip. Would have have any suggestions for alternatives?

Thanks!

a

 

[Mundy]

Great - so these will slide right into the internal enclosures on the Mac Pro?

Why am I always made skeptical of things that are priced so well

BTW, the price is pretty typical now for 320GB drives, which tend to be the best bang for the megabyte right now.

The Western Digital 3200KS is priced similarly. I ordered two of them this morning ($102 each including shipping) to replace the two Seagate 7200.10's that I had to RMA.

Supposedly, the Western Digital KS series is the quietest high-capacity desktop drive on the market right now. If they're as quiet as my RE2's, then I believe it. I guess I'll find out on Monday.

 

[Mundy]

Thanks for the tip. Would have have any suggestions for alternatives?

Thanks!

a

Here is the drive I ordered.

You really can't go wrong with most of the drives offered by Western Digital, Maxtor, Seagate, and Samsung. Just make sure that it's a 3.0 Gbps interface (SATA II), and you might also want to do some research if noise levels are important to you. Right now, the Western Digital 3200KS and Samsung SpinPoint series seem to be the quietest drives on the market. The newer Maxtor DiamondMax series is also pretty quiet.

If you want an enterprise-level "nearline" drive (good for long life and use in a RAID), check out the Maxtor Maxline and Western Digital RE series.

 

[arainert]

Cool. Did a little research and I'm going to go for the Wester Digital Caviar. Thanks for all the help.

Is installation really as easy as popping open the cabinet and sliding it in and it'll show up on the desktop?

Thanks!

a

 

[tyr2]

Is installation really as easy as popping open the cabinet and sliding it in and it'll show up on the desktop?

Pretty much, just screw it to the bracket with the screws provided (retained in the bracket) then pop it in.

IIRC you'll get a message asking if you want to format the disk. If not you can do it in disk utility. You'll want a HFS+ filesystem on it (normally).

 

[Jame]

Cool. Did a little research and I'm going to go for the Wester Digital Caviar. Thanks for all the help.

Is installation really as easy as popping open the cabinet and sliding it in and it'll show up on the desktop?

Thanks! a

I installed 3 of the Western Digital Caviar drives into my Mac Pro. Install is very simple, just use the included screws in the trays and slide them back into place. Couldn't be easier. Very quiet drives.

 

[gammamonk]

STAY AWAY from the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10! These drives are exhibiting a firmware conflict that, under OS X, causes horrible random write speeds. I know, because I had to RMA two of them back to NewEgg this morning.

Seagate has acknowledged the problem, but doesn't have a fix. It has been covered in some depth by both Barefeats.com and Xlr8yourmac.com, but unfortunately I didn't know about it until after I ordered the drives.

I went ahead and decided to benchmark the ones I received, and sure enough, they scored almost fifty points lower (!) in Xbench than my Western Digital RE2 drives. The problem was random reads and writes. Even in a striped configuration (RAID 0), the drives were slower than a single Western Digital RE2. I'm not saying that the RE2s are that much faster. I'm saying that something is wrong with the 7200.10.

If you're going to use the drive in a PC, the 7200.10 seems to be a great choice. But until Seagate gets their firmware issues straightened out, I would stay away from this drive under OS X.

Oh man, I just ordered another 7200.10 320 gig. Should I cancel? My other one seems ok, but I don't have anything to compare it to.

 

[Clix Pix]

Went to my local Micro Center this afternoon and came home with a little present for my Mac Pro: two Western Digital 500 GB SATA HD Caviar SE 16, 7200 rpm.....16 MB cache, 300 MB/s. Sound OK?

I'm glad to find this thread because I, too, had been wondering if it is really that easy to install additional HDs into the machine and also I'd been wondering about how to format the disks. While I'm not new to the Mac (bought my first iMac a year ago) I AM new to messing around with internal HDs (never had any problem with LaCie external drives) and I want to be sure I do this right. I've never had to format a disk before.

Someone mentioned that I should choose an option called "erase to 0" and that I also need to make at least one clone of my primary HD.... ?

 

[slughead]

Someone mentioned that I should choose an option called "erase to 0" and that I also need to make at least one clone of my primary HD.... ?

You only need to 'zero out' the hard drive if you're giving it to somebody and you dont want them to recover the data. DO NOT zero out the hard drive for fun! It can take DAYS.

If they mean do a "RAID-0" with your two 500 gigs, they're right, that'd be cool.

Simply go into disk utility and set it up for "RAID-0" or striped. I have the same setup with two 300's and it works great.