Best Hard Drive type for early Mac Pro

[mschafft1]

Hello there,

I have a 1.1 Mac Pro.
Was advised to use Sata II rather than Sata III hard drives.
Since I don't know where to find out about that, I took pictures of the labels of my 4 discs. And more questions came to mind : when shopping for new ones, what is best with an early Mac Pro when it comes to :
- cache
- disc speed
- else ?

many thanks if you can help me spot the relevant info on such labels as the ones pictured. And if you happen to know what is best for a 1.1 Mac Pro I'd love to hear about that.

I've upgraded the RAM to 8Go just so that you know.

Cheers !

Manny

 

[bamf]

I think this somewhat depends on what you will be doing with the disk space. Do you need to setup RAID? Is the speed, size, or both the most important thing to you?

I just put some Hitachi Coolspin 2TB drives into my 3,1. I was looking for cheap drives that were large, but not necessarily fast since I'm just looking to store a good deal of data.

Edit:

Disk 4 appears to be SATA 1, the other disks are SATAII I believe.

 

[mschafft1]

OK, thanks. I need at least one very big disk for backup (Time Machine). Apart from that, speed is crucial (music and video editing but not at professional level).

I know nothing about RAID, so I suppose I'm not using it and can probably do without. (I'm an individual user, not managing a server if that is relevant).

 

[philipma1957]

buy 3 of these maybe four one for a spare



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...e=samsung_3.5_inch_hdd-_-22-152-185-_-Product


buy one or two of these

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...2245&cm_re=samsung_2tb-_-22-152-245-_-Product

 

[AlexMaximus]

small ssd for osx, large hd for storage

Since you want to have a fast and responsive, snappy system I would always go with a fast but (usually) smaller system drive for the OSX and a larger drive for Data.
Your best option would be to go for a small 120 gig SSD for OSX. That gives you the biggest speed boast.
For storage I would go for a 2T drive, 32 or 64MB cache and 7200 rpm's. There are cheap green ones available with low power consumption, but you could also go for an enterprise/server grade drive that will double the price.

For the SSD you would need an 2,5 to 3,5 adapter to mount it on your MacPro HD slide. This way you would have great system for the years to come.

 

[chas0001]

In my 1,1 Mac Pro I have a 128GB Cruicial SSD that OS X and my Applications are installed on. My Data (user account) is stored on 2 1TB (ST31000528AS) drives that are software Raid'ed together.

Its very fast.

 

[derbothaus]

Those Samsungs are incredibly fast for 1TB drives. They actually have higher bandwidth than my Velociraptor 600GB when tested with AJA disk test. 135-150MB/s SINGLE! For 50.00!!! Damn. Avoid Seagate if you can unless you get one of their single platter designs. They just don't compete anymore.

 

[WardC]

I have two Seagate 1TB drives that I use in a 2TB RAID-0, actually I have had nod no problem with my Seagates, I find them to be very fast and very quiet. I have the stock Hitachi 1TB in Bay 1 for extra space, and my 120GB OWC Mercury Pro Extreme SSD in Bay 2 as my boot/applications drive. The Seagates are in Bays 3 and 4. I have been very happy with my setup and never had any problems.

 

[dreamersofeden]

Put some Western Digital Velociraptors on that Mac Pro and voilá, it will start flying.

 

[derbothaus]

I have two Seagate 1TB drives that I use in a 2TB RAID-0, actually I have had nod no problem with my Seagates, I find them to be very fast and very quiet. I have the stock Hitachi 1TB in Bay 1 for extra space, and my 120GB OWC Mercury Pro Extreme SSD in Bay 2 as my boot/applications drive. The Seagates are in Bays 3 and 4. I have been very happy with my setup and never had any problems.

I was referring to their performance not reliability. They are generally slower generation to generation than Samsung, WD, and Hitachi. I think the 3TB one is pretty fast though.

 

[derbothaus]

Put some Western Digital Velociraptors on that Mac Pro and voilá, it will start flying.

Hmm. $50.00 for Samsung 1TB vs. $250.00 for 600GB Raptor. Very similar performance minus a few ms seek time. Raptors make no sense anymore. I have a 600GB Velociraptor I use for my Home account (Had it anyway so why not use it). It's great. But it is in no way life changing like moving to SSD+1TB or more for storage. Price point is just not right anymore, if it ever was.

 

[lbeck]

If speed is crucial then do this.

1. Get a 60 or 120gb SSD for boot and apps
2. Get anywhere from 2-4, 1 or 2TB mechanical drives and put them in a RAID 0 for your data.
3. Be sure you back up with external or time machine.

Your system will feel brand new. I promise.