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Caviar Black vs. 2x green drives in RAID 0

H

halfcamerageek

macrumors member
Original poster
May 31, 2011
44
7
Hello.

I'm trying to decide which storage setup to choose for my 2006 MacPro. I'm currently running a 1tb 7200rpm Samsung hard drive as my main data drive, but I'd like to upgrade to a 2tb setup. Speed is important, since I work with big files in my graphic design and photography jobs. I already have an Intel 80gb G2 SSD for the boot drive.

I'm located in Brazil, where not all hard drive models are available and some, like the 2tb WD Caviar Black, are super expensive.

All three options below cost the same price, around USD 280. Which would you choose?

- Single 2tb WD Caviar Black
- software RAID 0 with 2x 2tb Samsung F4 HD204UI
- software RAID 0 with 2x 2tb Seagate ST2000DL003

At a first glance, a RAID 0 array with two green drives would give me better performance than a single Caviar Black. Anyone have experience running those Seagate and Samsung models in RAID 0?

Reliability is always important, but I have Time Machine backups on an external drive and also online backup via Backblaze, so I can live with the additional risk of a RAID 0 array.

Thank you for your opinions!

Cheers,
 
I have a bias towards Western Digital so I would say go for the RAID 0 with two Caviar Greens. Right now I have 2 Caviar Greens in my Mac Pro, not in a RAID 0 array, and they have been great. Personally I have never had any problems with Western Digital drives.
 
Consumer grade Green's don't do well in RAID configurations from what I've seen (can't take the abuse), so you might want to take that into consideration.

And as per performance with a pair of Greens, you'd be looking at ~150 - 160MB/s out of the pair for sequential throughputs (typically get ~77MB/s in single disk mode for a Caviar Green for example, and just multiply for a stripe set by the number of members).
 
Seagate has gone to the ******* and the "green" drives arent even 7200 rpm. I would suggest the Hitachi Ultrastar. These are server drives.
 
fabriciom said:
Seagate has gone to the ******* and the "green" drives aren't even 7200 rpm. I would suggest the Hitachi Ultrastar. These are server drives.
Click to expand...
Enterprise grade disks aren't a necessity though, especially for a software implemented stripe set.

A pair of Caviar Blacks would be fine (they have enterprise spec platters @ 1E15 bit error rate, just not the additional sensors and different firmware timings <enterprise timings are meant for hardware RAID cards>). :)
 
Sahib7 said:
What about 2x Caviar Black 1TB RAID0?
Click to expand...

A pair of Caviar Blacks would be my first choice, but they're too expensive here in Brazil, USD 280 a piece. The Samsung and Seagate green drives are also easier to find, so I was thinking about going this route.

After reading the comments at Newegg and Amazon, i think both the Samsung and the Seagate would run fine in RAID 0, as long as I stick with MacOS' built in software raid. It seems that enterprise hard drives are recommended specially for hardware RAID, but most of the drives work fine in regular software RAID modes.

Thank you all for your comments. ;)
 
I'm running 2x 1TB Caviar Blacks in RAID0 and no problems here. Using a 2TB Green as RAID backup.
 
The Caviar Green drives like to spin down too much; every once in a while my RAID controller would think the drive died or something because it would take too long to spin up or something... I would skip using green drives. Not worth the hassle.
 
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