Mac Pro - Best 7200 Internal Hard Drive

frankiefrankie
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
I just purchased a new Mac Pro I've been saving for for years! I would like to add 3 HDs inside myself as I decided against blowing the bank and buying them from Apple.



I've been reading all the reviews online and none of the new drives (Barracuda/Hitachi, etc) are getting good ratings, either from slower than printed speeds or noise issues.



I do Video and Audio work, however, I'm thinking of sticking with 7200 drives for now, as the Raptors, etc don't quite seem to be worth the speed increase yet storage decrease for the price yet.

Does anyone disagree with this or know of anything better?



Does anyone have any suggestions on what seems to be the best thing going or drives that you've bought for similar work?



Thanks so much for any info! Much appreciated!

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 13
    bloodshotrollin'redbloodshotrollin'red Posts: 442member
    Take a look at Samsung Spinpoint F1 these are excellent HDD's



    http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/...ng/page11.html
  • Reply 2 of 13
    jasdeltjasdelt Posts: 8member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by frankie View Post


    I just purchased a new Mac Pro I've been saving for for years! I would like to add 3 HDs inside myself as I decided against blowing the bank and buying them from Apple.



    I've been reading all the reviews online and none of the new drives (Barracuda/Hitachi, etc) are getting good ratings, either from slower than printed speeds or noise issues.



    I do Video and Audio work, however, I'm thinking of sticking with 7200 drives for now, as the Raptors, etc don't quite seem to be worth the speed increase yet storage decrease for the price yet.

    Does anyone disagree with this or know of anything better?



    Does anyone have any suggestions on what seems to be the best thing going or drives that you've bought for similar work?



    Thanks so much for any info! Much appreciated!



    Take a look here. I bought one of these at the OWC booth at Mac World and I now use it as my Macintosh HD. I also have one WD 500, one Maxtor 500 and one Seagate 400, they all work pretty well.



    https://eshop.macsales.com/item/West...al/WD7500AAKS/



    Jim
  • Reply 3 of 13
    kmac1036kmac1036 Posts: 281member
    I've had horrible luck with WD, I started buying seagate again. The seagates do seem to put out more noise, but so far have held up. The seagate server drive series eg: the model # ends in NS, is the top of the line. I put those in my Mom's G5 on RAID 1, they are pretty quiet.



    Check out www.newegg.com They have some of the best deals around. If you are looking to make up for some speed, get all matching drives, do a RAID 10, use the current drive as a extra backup or external drive. The cases from www.macsales.com are good.



    Article: MacPro RAID setup: http://www.macworld.com/article/5785...eekfactor.html
  • Reply 4 of 13
    onlookeronlooker Posts: 5,252member
    I had just the opposite luck. Seagate's were freezing on me, and I went back to WD. If you look around (everywhere) frankie, you'll notice that all drive manufacturers have issues with old, and current models. I just bought a Mac Pro too, and I started reading reviews. I didn't find any one manufacturer that didn't have multiple bad incidences with their new drives. You hear about every drive that has problems because people post it, and Samsung F1's Seagate's, WD's, Maxtors, all have bad postings all over the internet. You don't hear about how many are not having problems usually. It happens. There are people that just got brand new Mac Pro's that arrived DOA for reasons unknown. I've seen the posts.



    I'd say your best bet is to choose the specs you like from the manufacturer you can afford, and you think you trust and buy it. Because there is no way to tell what your going to get. All the manufacturers are about equal. (although the Seagate is probably the loudest)
  • Reply 5 of 13
    frankiefrankie Posts: 381member
    Does anyone know the difference between a regular old HD and a 'Enterprise' series version? There's obviously quite a price difference!



    Thanks for any info!
  • Reply 6 of 13
    frankiefrankie Posts: 381member
    Does anyone know the difference between a regular old HD and a 'Enterprise' series version? There's obviously quite a price difference!



    Thanks for any info!



    Still curious!



    Thanks for any info!
  • Reply 7 of 13
    futurepastnowfuturepastnow Posts: 1,772member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by frankie View Post


    Does anyone know the difference between a regular old HD and a 'Enterprise' series version? There's obviously quite a price difference!



    Thanks for any info!



    Still curious!



    Thanks for any info!



    Mainly just firmware optimizations to make them work better in RAID arrays. The warranty is probably different, too.
  • Reply 8 of 13
    norman terrynorman terry Posts: 21member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by FuturePastNow View Post


    Mainly just firmware optimizations to make them work better in RAID arrays. The warranty is probably different, too.



    Supposedly they have a little bit better cooling because usually the chassis are supposed to be optimized for constant activity. They also usually have a larger cache and are always ball bearing.
  • Reply 9 of 13
    frankiefrankie Posts: 381member
    So is it worth it buy an enterprise version?



    I can't decide between an excellently rated Samsung 1TB and the Seagate 11 series 1TB.



    Anyone have any thoughts ?



    Thanks!
  • Reply 10 of 13
    norman terrynorman terry Posts: 21member
    Check out hitachi's I have always had very good luck with them. They have far improved since the deathstar days.
  • Reply 11 of 13
    futurepastnowfuturepastnow Posts: 1,772member
    I don't have a Mac Pro to put it in, but I recently bought one the new 640GB WD drives, and it's the fastest, quietest, coolest-running drive I've ever seen.
  • Reply 12 of 13
    sevebcsevebc Posts: 3member
    Enterprise hard drives have significantly greater Mean Time Between Failure ratings than desktop hard drives, typically 1000000 hrs for enterprise class drives. Seagate Barracuda 7200.10.ES carries a 5 year warranty. Hitachi E7K500 3 year warranty. Western Digital Enterprise WD RE2 5 yr. Western Digital Marketing spiel "With 1.2 million hours MTBF, 3 Gb/s SATA technology and best-in-class vibration tolerance, these drives offer the best combination of reliability, high capacity and performance for enterprise applications."



    However check Google tech paper "Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population" to see that disk failure generally in first 6 months of use ~ 8% or much later yrs 1-5 ~ 2 - 3%.



    For speed relatively low noise and price desktop drive Samsung F1 750GB [see CustomPC website tests] or the slower WD Caviar drives. How much do you value your data? How deep are your pockets? Perhaps invest in a GTech Sonnet or Wiebetech portable RAID array with enterprise hard drives which are hot swappable.



    Remember a 3dB increase is a doubling of noise level due to log scale of decibels. Check QuitePC or others for hard drive noise sleeves.
  • Reply 13 of 13
    frankiefrankie Posts: 381member
    Thanks for all the great info!



    OK-so not to beat a dead horse (where did that expression come from anyways?)



    I'm looking to add 3 internal drives (not in a raid) to my new mac pro to use for virtual music software sounds. Would I be better off with the standard Seagate Barracuda 11 or paying a little more for the enterprise version? (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148278)



    Thanks again for any insights!
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