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Quick HDD question: Which of these two?

H

HXGuy

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Mar 25, 2010
1,679
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Looking for a hard drive that's both compatible with the 2010 Mac Pro which will be used strictly for Time Machine.

I want to go with one of these two...would rather go with the cheaper of the two but the cheaper one (Hitachi) has a 32MB Cache while the other (WD) has a 64MB Cache. Is this important for Time Machine purposes?

Also, the Hitachi is SATA 6.0Gb/s while the WD is SATA 3.0Gb/s. In addition, the WD comes with some sort of Add On card...what's that about?

Hitachi

Western Digital
 
HXGuy said:
Looking for a hard drive that's both compatible with the 2010 Mac Pro which will be used strictly for Time Machine.

I want to go with one of these two...would rather go with the cheaper of the two but the cheaper one (Hitachi) has a 32MB Cache while the other (WD) has a 64MB Cache. Is this important for Time Machine purposes?

Also, the Hitachi is SATA 6.0Gb/s while the WD is SATA 3.0Gb/s. In addition, the WD comes with some sort of Add On card...what's that about?

Hitachi

Western Digital
Click to expand...

the western digital work great I have 5 or 6 of them in and outside of my mac pro. I also sold a lot of them on ebay .
the add on card does not apply to macs. the cache is more important for booting purposes and a pair of these in raid0 are very fast as a huge boot drive.
 
Ok, so I guess WD it is...you get what you pay for right? :)

For boot, I'm going with an SSD drive.
 
I try to avoid Newegg for hard drives. They have a 50% DOA rate cause their shipping guy is Ace Ventura.
 
philipma1957 said:
this seller on ebay has a better price then I do or newegg.


http://cgi.ebay.com/Western-Digital...ltDomain_0&hash=item3f0a017d51#ht_1458wt_1052

offer 130 or so and he will sell one to you. they will come sealed with a warranty. or buy it from newegg and pay 20 more. I am not this seller on ebay. I have purchased dozens of western digital 3tb's from him. my name will show up in his feedbacks.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the heads up.

Any concern that he doesn't accept returns? What happens if the drive is DOA?
 
I only buy western digital hdds because they have the easiest return setup. If you buy one he sends it in an oem box. the serial is on the back of the box and it matches the drive inside the drive comes sealed. I go to the website and I check the warranty. if the warranty is good I register the drive. wd takes back a bad drive in the oem box and will send a shipping label for 6 bucks. if the drive comes and the warranty is bad i never opened the drive ebay would force him to take it back but he has sent me a boat load of drives all with oem packing and good warranties. read his feed back he has had the best price for 6 months on this drive. here are photos of a drive he send to me two days ago. also blurred photo of wd's warranty check page. this drive has a good warranty until april 2014. I paid 130 and ebay gave me a 10 percent coupon so I paid 117 net for 3tb
 

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JesterJJZ said:
I try to avoid Newegg for hard drives. They have a 50% DOA rate cause their shipping guy is Ace Ventura.
Click to expand...

Lol, if this was true they would be out of business. I have bought close to 20 drives from new egg and never had a bad one. 50% lol
 
sjordan said:
Lol, if this was true they would be out of business. I have bought close to 20 drives from new egg and never had a bad one. 50% lol
Click to expand...

Consider yourself lucky. 50% may be an exaggeration, but I've probably sent back 1 out of 5 drives gotten on newegg over the years. And I know many many other in the same boat. Just go read their reviews on pretty much any bare drive they sell. Every other comment or so is about drives coming DOA.
 
bad drives from newegg is why i only buy western digital. newegg has charged me 12 bucks to ship the bad one back and then shipped me another bad one. But if you buy a western digital from them and it is bad just send it back to wd only 6 bucks and the factory direct replacements from wd have been very good for me.

Because newegg sent me 5 out 25 bad hdds in 2 years i learned about wd's easy return setup I completely bypass newegg. I then found some ebay sellers of oem factory sealed hdds (only wd) and save more.
 
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