Yup, I've used almost that exact cable. Then I switched to AJA and it was a lot better. Nothing against BM or anything.
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No storage--Apple may have done you a favor!
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Yup, I've used almost that exact cable. Then I switched to AJA and it was a lot better. Nothing against BM or anything.
It will be funny if the next update to the new Mac Pro includes hard drive bays as a feature.
Personally, I expect this thing to cost a lot, given the workstation class graphics cards, high-end CPU, fancy case and it being made in 'merica. I was holding out for it but now I think that the iMac would be better value and just as expandable
iMac won't satisfy power cpu users never has never will. Cores are key for a lot of mac pro users that render for a living.
May have done you a favor, like a gun manufacturer which doesn't allow the gun to fire when pointed at your foot. :>o
Disk capacity has grown over a million fold.
Error correction has not.
Someone posted they have 16 TB of storage in their MP, but with disk error rates, can you even read those bits in storage without getting an error? And disk capacity will continue to grow; Seagate is talking about 60TB in a single disk.
Mac OS X/HFS really is not up to that task, that is your storage problem, not where the HFS disk are.
There may be a lack of reading comprehension.
There is all kind of name calling, I am not sure if it even makes sense. I said other communities have many of these problems solved with more advanced file systems, and I will probably be giving some money to HP--not Apple.
Wouldn't that make me an HP shill? Would I be a HP sock puppet ?
Anyway
Storage comes in many flavors. If you want speed, go with ssd. If you want economical archiving/backup use spinning disks, but have redundancy and a modern file system to deal with the capacity. There is a role for both.
BTW, many people find out the hard way that raid5 is not so good with lots of data. A disk fails, then to regenerate parity all the bits must be read, but often there is a disk error, so now you must start over and restore everything from backup.
Disk capacity has grown over a million fold.
Error correction has not.
Someone posted they have 16 TB of storage in their MP, but with disk error rates, can you even read those bits in storage without getting an error? And disk capacity will continue to grow; Seagate is talking about 60TB in a single disk.
Mac OS X/HFS really is not up to that task, that is your storage problem, not where the HFS disk are.
There may be a lack of reading comprehension.
There is all kind of name calling, I am not sure if it even makes sense. I said other communities have many of these problems solved with more advanced file systems, and I will probably be giving some money to HP--not Apple.
Wouldn't that make me an HP shill? Would I be a HP sock puppet ?
Anyway
Storage comes in many flavors. If you want speed, go with ssd. If you want economical archiving/backup use spinning disks, but have redundancy and a modern file system to deal with the capacity. There is a role for both.
BTW, many people find out the hard way that raid5 is not so good with lots of data. A disk fails, then to regenerate parity all the bits must be read, but often there is a disk error, so now you must start over and restore everything from backup.
you guys are full of it. what's so difficult about external USB storage that makes this unworkable?
why do the drives have to be INSIDE??? Explain that! No one said you are a savage if you don't use a NAS. You are a savage if you are begging to run a rats nest of wires INSIDE the computer so you don't have to shell out for an external enclosure. Once again panties in a bunch. Once again absolutely ridiculous that you think I'm some sort of apple shill for making such a simple argument.
When the mac pro 1,1 came out there were a limited number of options for external storage and how to connect to it. With USB3 and thunderbolt there is no express reason why storage has to be in the tower. It's a pretty bizarre way to distribute space if you think about it. In fact, Apple doesn't see any reason why the tower has to be a tower. Throwing your toys out the pram because of an outdated storage model isn't very convincing for your perspectives.
why do the drives have to be INSIDE??? Explain that! No one said you are a savage if you don't use a NAS. You are a savage if you are begging to run a rats nest of wires INSIDE the computer so you don't have to shell out for an external enclosure. Once again panties in a bunch. Once again absolutely ridiculous that you think I'm some sort of apple shill for making such a simple argument.
When the mac pro 1,1 came out there were a limited number of options for external storage and how to connect to it. With USB3 and thunderbolt there is no express reason why storage has to be in the tower. It's a pretty bizarre way to distribute space if you think about it. In fact, Apple doesn't see any reason why the tower has to be a tower. Throwing your toys out the pram because of an outdated storage model isn't very convincing for your perspectives.
Not really. Better error correction requires more storage ... which is exactly what also have above. The error correction has (typically) gone up along with density. What hasn't shifted much is the balance to where there is an effort to drive it significantly lower. That primarily because a file system is a better for a slightly different scheme with different weaknesses to deliver an supplemental increase.
It is not so much lots of data as much as trying to tightly couple the bleeding edge in capacity to parity RAID (5 , 6, 50 , etc.). If use mid-size drives and have internal throughput to do the rebuilds than it is not as much of a problem. The trade-off is just using more drives. Which again begs the queston of why want to have finite number of drive bays (i.e., a singular box with fix number of sleds) if this (bulk RAID 5/6/etc) is problem trying to solve.
Uncontrollable spin down for one. Relying on 3rd party case electronics and sleep cycles for 2. Ever had your timelines crash while waiting for hard disk spin up? Ever tried to remedy this using OS X's built in tools? It is ridiculous.
Right on.
You can really tell the iMac users in here, chanting, "What's wrong with it?" because they've never gone beyond prosumer level work.
Same applies to people who have never gone beyond prosumer work yelling Apple messed up the Mac Pro. The use of centralised storage is a must in lots of businesses. Some don't even allow storing data locally! Quite a lot of business users never plug in aany usb, tb, fw or whatever kind of data connection drive. They store it on the network.
It's just different uses, different pieces of hardware. For some it will work out fine, for others it won't.
It's just different uses, different pieces of hardware. For some it will work out fine, for others it won't.
Here's why. My MP has three internal 4TB data drives in addition to two 2TB Boot drives. I also have two Mercury Rack Pro enclosures which can be connected via USB2, USB3, eSATA or FW800.
One of the Mercury Rack Pros is for CCC backups of the internal drives using two 2TB and two 4TB drives. The other contains Windows data discs and the never-seems-to-quite-work Windows File Back up.
The internal drives are very quiet. They're hiding under my desk and power up automatically. Unlike the occasionally flaky Rack Pros the internal drives are always connected. Regardless of the OS in use and the drive formatting the internals are always available to read or write.
Internal drives work best for me. sure, if I bought an iMac or mini I would have to put up with the noisy external boxes and wiring for my daily work. External drives are something that one has to live with if using a designer artyfarty minimum box like a Mac mini or an iMac.
Users of machines like a Mac Pro or HP Z should not have to put up with that kind of mess.
Exactly. And I dare you to get an external enclosure as fast, quiet, safe and unsightly (since we care about aesthetics so much) as internal drives/RAIDs. Check out the internal options on a Promax ONE+. Holy crap.
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So, with that in mind how are you hooking up your 10Gbe NIC for fast network data transfer? A Thunderbolt enclosure with a card in it?
please. I wouldn't convince yourself you are an advanced computing user because you try to stuff as many drives in your tower as it allows. I've got a 1,1 since it came out so you can feel free to shove your theory wherever you'd like. What you fail to realize are that the serious professional users haven't been using local storage for YEARS now. That's why apple didn't bother to include it. It's a design that they can use for the future rather than continuing to make ridiculously large cases that are mostly going to sit empty.
So the point that's been made is that... it's too noisy. You can get disks with various properties that meet your specific demands (noise, spin, and even different cases). Nothing about what the mac pro previously provided was incredibly helpful anyway, as was pointed out in the same paragraph. It seems fairly silly to build the mac pro extra large so you can put disks inside because they are too noisy in the case you got. ... put it under the desk? in another room? this is the future of computing - you'd have to be seriously deluded to not recognize how storage shifted from centralization, to localization, back to centralization over the past 30 years or so.
And for the 10Gb NICs... yeah, what else are you going to do? You can get a smalltree 10Gb NIC over thunderbolt right now and this is from before the mac pro announcement. How is that a big deal? What do you think you'd have to do with the old mac pro anyway? The cards cost a lot anyway so once again the biggest factor I'm seeing in this is the "buttttt I waaaaaant it in my tooooweeerrrrr" crowd
If you need a mac pro because you need something to put drives in... maybe you should investigate a ****ing box?
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Storage speed doesn't matter much .
Still, if you need an external enclosure for more than 1-2 HDDs, you need a seperate room for those , else the fan noise or the vibrations will drive you bonkers . No big deal, though .
However.
The little information we have right now, suggests the new MP will only have one single drive inside .
While it is not necessary, most users will have their system and apps on that drive . This thing can be as fast as lightning, yet it will contribute almost zero to your system's performance in most applications, if not all of them .
Depending on your workflow and the programs you use, there's between 1TB and xTB for the drives with your project files, libraries, scratch and such , on at least two different additional disks or Raid arrays .
There is no place for those drives inside the new MP.
Please tell me how to replace these internal drives with external options of similar performance .
Or, since this is a next generation workstation, tell me how I can get better performance from drives in external enclosures, for crucial drive related performance (see above) .
Oh, and since it's free in any workstation known to man, adding drives required even for basic performance needs should come at no additional cost .
Just kidding, times have changed; I'll grant you a 50 bucks budget .
Including cables .
USB3.0 is faster than any SATA drive right now anyway - so what performance decreases are you worrying about? You can pop as many pcie SSDs as you want with thunderbolt, so I'm really struggling to understand where the problem is for you. And if you think having an incredibly fast boot disk that has your applications on it wont benefit the performance of such applications you are as wrong as it can get.
Do you want a pcie SSD scratch disk? Plug it in through thunderbolt. I'm not interested in your silly game where you ask me to find you something that doesn't exist. So it's not just "waaaah waaaah, it's gotta be in my case" it's "waaaah waaah it's gotta be in my case because I don't want to spend more than $50" Clearly the mac pro isn't for you if you are worried about $50.
Sorry for quoting the entire reply .
It's just to demonstrate how little is known regarding internal disk performance in general by many people, despite it's importance .
And what it actually takes to replace internal drives with external alternatives for performance critical tasks.
Agreed. The lack of knowledge about professional hardware for professional tasks in this thread is pretty staggering.
Very nice. The Promax ONE+ looks like it's made for actual "pro"fessionals or for "pro"duction rather than an upscale "pro"sumer who wants a stylish bad-boy Mac rocking his desk.
You're not suggesting to use USB3.0 for external drives on the new Mac Pro are you? Besides cabling and noise there is another issue that Apple consistently goofs up;
Say you have a new Mac Pro, its cousin the Mac mini or even either of the excellent iMacs. You've got an Apple wired keyboard plugged in (because the BT/laptop keyboards suck), a card reader because you use a Pro camera and CF cards are the rule, an iPhone dock and a printer. Now where do the USB3 enclosures plug in? Additionally where does the other printer(s) plug in?
Don't even suggest a TB. More money spent and additional cables strung because Apple always puts too few USB ports on their products? I could swear sometimes that everything Apple produces is for a school kid who has nothing more than an iPhone and one printer to plug in his shiny new Mac.
Oddly enough both the mini (a laptop in a little box) and the new Mac Pro (parts of a powerful desktop in a little box) have the same lack of forethought regarding USB.
Sure there is no ideal solution for that link of the puzzle just yet.
That doesn't rule out a Thunderbolt2 hub* coming out later in the year around the same time as the new Mac Pro.
*Yes a Thunderbolt Hub, like a PCIe Hub would have both the switch and the network translation for each connected device in the hub. Unlike other switches (like ethernet) that have Network Translations in the device itself.
Absolutely, but that's ANOTHER device to add on. It just seems like if you were to grab this thing by the handle to take to a studio to work, you'd also have a case full of accessories twice the size of a current MP. I just thought that was pretty crappy to actually include a much needed connection but to include a last-generation version.
10Gbe is running wild in the video world and including a faster port would've been a FANTASTIC move.
I guess I would use my brain and plug my phone into the extra usb on the keyboard, the card reader into the numerous usb ports on the back of my display, and the printer would be wireless or I guess I could plug it in when it actually gets used. Your looking for problems that are not there.
Seriously?
Keyboard, Mouse, iPhone dock, USB sticks, CF reader go into a USB hub on your desktop (or built into your display). Many people already do this so they can connect things without groping behind the computer. That takes up one whole USB socket.
As for printers... they go on the Ethernet or WiFi network. Even cheap'n'cheerful consumer printers offer networking these days. Get one next time your cartridge runs out and its cheaper to buy a new printer than a refill.
That leaves 3 whole sockets for your USB drives (plus all those Thunderbolt sockets). You'll probably have the luxury of connecting your CF reader directly lest you want to upload photos, sync your iPod, copy from a USB stick without mouse lag interrupting your game.
I prefer my hard drives inside because I like only having to secure one device (Mac Pro) versus two-or-more devices, some of which are expressly made to wander away.
Not only is this good practice, but something most people would want me to do, an ethical obligation of my job, and something that could get me in hot water if it fails.
It's not going to kill me to deal with a bunch of external drives, but securing the "Mac Pro Octopus" is going to be just one more petty inconvenience I don't have with my current machine.
I don't know where you work that you need to prevent people from walking away with your stuff, but that seems more like your problem than apple's
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school kid? it's you that has your printer plugged into the computer! is this is a workstation or... also your home computer?
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school kid? it's you that has your printer plugged into the computer! is this is a workstation or... also your home computer?
I agree.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but is there just the four RAM slots? If so, this is another feature that suggests Prosumer.
It's interesting, as an observer, to read through the debate of internal vs external. There are clearly arguments for both at the moment.
I think, as connection speeds improve over long distance (be it WiFi or cheaper wired solutions) the idea of having signifcant local storage will become quite antiquated. However this is not our current reality.
In the meantime the new MP will suit some and be a big hassle for others.