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Juggling HD's... Advice needed...

W

whyrichard

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Aug 15, 2002
1,715
8
Hello Mac Guys,

Need some advice regarding a new HD setup in my '09 quad...

Currently I have 4 Harddrives:

1: 80GIG SSD Intel
2: 80GIG SSD Intel
3: 1 Tera Caviar Black
4: 1 Tera Caviar Black

Currently, I have the two SSD's in software RAID-0 as my bootdrive, #3 as my storage and an 80 gig bootcamp partition, and #4 as my time machine backup. I am approaching filling up my hd's...

I am thinking of adding a fifth harddrive, a 3 terabyte green or something to that effect, to act as my primary time machine hd as well as to hold my 80gig bootcamp partition. I'll get it in there by moving one of my ssd's to the 2nd cd drive area. I was going to software raid-0 the two caviar blacks to serve as storage...

Questions are:
-will this work?
-how do i hold my ssd in my 2nd cd area? make a mount or buy a mount?

-are there disadvantages to having my boot on a software ssd raid 0, and my storage on a software raid 0?

-what good 3tb drives are there?

Thank you for your help!

r.
 
It will work, yes. I also have my SSD boot drive located in the lower cd-drive area, it just lays there, no bracket or anything. I don't move my Mac Pro around so it doesn't really matter...

I don't see disadvantages with those RAID0 configurations, as long as you have a good backup (which you have with time machine).

Can't give you any advice on the 3TB drives, they're all the same in my eyes.
 
Hello,

With regular back-up, RAID0 means 0 risk and faster speed, so go ahead.

whyrichard said:
What is the dif between SATA and SATA 3?
Click to expand...

In real world terms: nothing. For recent SSDs, going to SATA3 will make a huge difference for SATA3 equipped systems, and even for some SATA2 systems. But on Mechanical HDs, no difference at all. Get the cheapest.

As for the brand of your 3TB: they're all pretty recent so we can't really know which ones are more reliable...

Loa
 
Loa said:
As for the brand of your 3TB: they're all pretty recent so we can't really know which ones are more reliable...
Click to expand...
Of the specific models, there isn't a lot of information.

But if you look at recent history, Hitachi's consumer drives aren't that reliable (since they moved manufacturing to China from Malaysia). Seagate's aren't very good either (i.e. seeing over 30% failure rates on the 7200.12 series for example). :(

So for mechanical disks, I'd recommend sticking to Western Digital right now.

Oddly enough, WD recently bought Hitachi (to improve their enterprise product presence), but even if they improve (if Hitachi branded disks don't vanish), it will take time for such improvements to occur.
 
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