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I Can’t believe I have ran out of storage on my 2012 Mac Pro already

bigbadneil

bigbadneil

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 18, 2009
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I have a late 2012 Mac Pro (the rectangle one not the round one) and installed an extra 6 TB when I bought it thinking that it would last me for life......anyway I guess not as I only have 600 MB spare space so I need to/want to buy more storage (I am a photographer)
I have been looking at the "PROMISE Pegasus2 R6 12TB (6 x 2TB) Thunderbolt 2 RAID System" for my Mac Pro but just noticed that my Mac Pro does not have a thunder bolt connection............... Can someone please recommend a ~12 TB external memory that will work with my Mac Pro.
I am not a IT guy so want something that is plug and play

Any help would be much appreciated
 
It would actually be much cheaper to just install larger disks internally - you can easily get 6 or even 8TB in a single disk now and you could always move these to an external solution later when you upgrade the machine - by then Thunderbolt may have moved on to a letter version anyway.
 
I will just put this out there - have you used any programs like Grand Perspective to visualize your disk usage to make sure you aren't wasting a bunch of space on something unnecessary or image de-duplication programs to reduce storage requirements?
 
Hi Matt
According to Apple the max you can have is 2 TB in each bay.....see below

Up to 8TB of internal storage7 in bays 1 through 4 using hard drives or solid-state drives in the following capacities:
  • 1TB or 2TB hard drives, Serial ATA 3Gb/s, 7200 rpm, 32MB cache
  • 512GB solid-state drive, Serial ATA 3Gb/s
 
zhenya said:
I will just put this out there - have you used any programs like Grand Perspective to visualize your disk usage to make sure you aren't wasting a bunch of space on something unnecessary or image de-duplication programs to reduce storage requirements?
Click to expand...
I've got a duplicate program that looks for duplicate images already...............my image files are all over 100 MB each so that's why I have filled up the memory so quick.........I suppose I could go in and delete a bunch of the old stuff but reluctant to do that.
 
Hello,

You can use hard drives as big as they get. But know that from 6TB upwards, you'll have issues if you want to mount them in the regular bays.

Loa
 
bigbadneil said:
Hi Matt
According to Apple the max you can have is 2 TB in each bay.....see below

Up to 8TB of internal storage7 in bays 1 through 4 using hard drives or solid-state drives in the following capacities:
  • 1TB or 2TB hard drives, Serial ATA 3Gb/s, 7200 rpm, 32MB cache
  • 512GB solid-state drive, Serial ATA 3Gb/s
Click to expand...
App0le? That was THEN! This is... now (hint: they have NEVER updated or changed those numbers). And there isw nothing that precludes or limits GPT (GUID) though Apple screwed owners of its hardware RAID to 32-bit 2.2TB world.

The 6TB drive uses a custom drive sled.
There were BUGS into'd in 10.8.4 regarding using Disk Utility (not sure how Yosemite and newest logical volumes fare).

You'll find, if you look, people using 1TB SSD and 1TB PCIe-SSD "blades"

The folks that write those specs are basically not technically proficient, and there have been lots of misleading requirements, and omission of UEFI/EFI-64 role or that "800MHz DDR2" has zilch to do with the 8800GT being compatible in a 2008 3,1 or not.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/HGST/0S03839/
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MPRODBKTLG6/
 
Last edited:
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Loa said:
Hello,

You can use hard drives as big as they get. But know that from 6TB upwards, you'll have issues if you want to mount them in the regular bays.

Loa
Click to expand...
Hi Loa
Thanks for the feedback. Please can you point me in the right direction for getting 3 of these 6TB drives that will slot into my Mac Pro ?
 
bigbadneil said:
I've got a duplicate program that looks for duplicate images already...............my image files are all over 100 MB each so that's why I have filled up the memory so quick.........I suppose I could go in and delete a bunch of the old stuff but reluctant to do that.
Click to expand...

Your system belongs on a small super fast PCIe-SSD (500GB or even 256GB), separate from data, and you could use SoftRAID v. 5 and create arrays of 4x4TB or larger for 16-24TB of storage, and use RAID5 even - via software.
 
Hello,

pastrychef said:
Do you have a source for this info? Have you personally tested? Thanks.
Click to expand...

No, haven't tested it myself. But see here:

http://www.storagereview.com/6tb_hdds_causing_problems_for_system_vendors_but_not_the_way_you_think

bigbadneil said:
Hi Loa
Thanks for the feedback. Please can you point me in the right direction for getting 3 of these 6TB drives that will slot into my Mac Pro ?
Click to expand...

Check the link above, and make sure the company you'll choose will have traditional screw locations. WD seem like they the traditional screw hole locations on the drive's belly (which is what we need for the trays in our Mac Pros). But check before buying.

Loa
 
Okay I looked on the website OWC where I bought my original 2 TB HDD drives and see that they have 3 different 6 TB HDD drives for sale and wondered why they were different prices??
Should I go for the cheaper $275 ones or go for the 400 plus ones............
ALSO PLEASE CAN YOU CONFIRM I AM LOOKING AT THE CORRECT THING ................Like I said I am not a IT kind of guy
Capture.JPG
 
Loa said:
I never tried a Drobo, but do you use the same screw holes as for the Mac Pro drive bay?

Loa
Click to expand...

With the Drobos, you don't have to screw anything in. But I remember visually inspecting the drives and don't recall any change in the location of the drive's mounting locations.
 
Standard SATA 3.5" drives up to 4TB in size all fit straight in the drive bays with the existing trays. Some recent 5, 6 and 8TB models do as well but on others the position of the 4 screws has changed so you need a replacement sled such as this:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MPRODBKTLG6/

You can of course also mount drives in the optical bays instead if you only need one or zero optical drives with simple adaptors or brackets.

The only issue I am aware of with larger disks is the Hitachi NAS edition 6TB disk on 2009 and later Mac Pro models running an OS later than 10.6. This specific disk fails to mount if you do a restart - i.e it mounts on a cold boot only. I know this as I'm using one myself for Time machine so after any software update that requires a restart I then have to do a shutdown to get it back again. As I sleep my machine normally I'm living with it for now but one of the other 6TB models would be a better choice because of this.
 
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bigbadneil said:
Hi Matt
According to Apple the max you can have is 2 TB in each bay.....see below

Up to 8TB of internal storage7 in bays 1 through 4 using hard drives or solid-state drives in the following capacities:
  • 1TB or 2TB hard drives, Serial ATA 3Gb/s, 7200 rpm, 32MB cache
  • 512GB solid-state drive, Serial ATA 3Gb/s
Click to expand...

Forgot to say this is simply because that is all that existed back then - it's not a technical limitation. FYI I'm using a 4TB a 6TB, two 3TB and a 480GB SSD in the 4 drive bays plus the 2nd optical bay in my 09 Mac Pro.
 
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Stay away from Drobo, archive the stuff you don't need to external drives, at least two different ones. The basic rule with digital files is that if they don't exist in at least two places, they don't exist at all.
 
JesterJJZ said:
Stay away from Drobo, archive the stuff you don't need to external drives, at least two different ones. The basic rule with digital files is that if they don't exist in at least two places, they don't exist at all.
Click to expand...

That's debatable and I've heard it all before... Multiple copeis in different physical locations, etc. etc.

For me, the redundancy of the Drobos are enough. I've been using them for many years and have lost zero data. When I first started using my Drobos, 1.5TB drives were the largest commercially available consumer drives. Now, I have my Drobos loaded up with 8TB drives. Drives have failed and they have recovered from them without issue.
 
JesterJJZ said:
Stay away from Drobo, archive the stuff you don't need to external drives, at least two different ones. The basic rule with digital files is that if they don't exist in at least two places, they don't exist at all.
Click to expand...
What's DROBO
 
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