recommend hard drives?

[Jeff Troiano]

Can anyone recommend good drives for a Mac Pro Tower? Buying an 8 core tower, either the 2.26, or the 2.4, from B&H. I'm looking to add 3 more drives. Can I add any SATA drives, or should I look for something specific?

Thanks for the help,

[Chris Medico]

The specific thing in my opinion to look for is and enterprise class drive and not a consumer class drive. Look at its duty rating. If its rated for 24h/day use its likely an enterprise class drive and the MTBF will be higher.

If you are going to use standard drives for a production system plan to replace them every 18 months or so. My experience is they get flaky after that. Especially in a RAID setup.

With Seagate as an example you can identify drives by the last letters in the part number. ST31000340NS is an enterprise class drive where ST31000340AS would be a standard drive.

[Allen White]

I swear by OWC drives -- durable, well-built, affordable, a wide range of products, and an excellent warranty with fantastic customer service.

Performance Upgrades; FireWire USB SATA Storage; Memory, more at OWC

[Jeff Troiano]

Originally Posted by Allen White

I swear by OWC drives -- durable, well-built, affordable, a wide range of products, and an excellent warranty with fantastic customer service.

Performance Upgrades; FireWire USB SATA Storage; Memory, more at OWC

I had come across their site, and was planning on using them for me memory upgrade. Their drive prices aren't bad.

Originally Posted by Chris Medico

The specific thing in my opinion to look for is and enterprise class drive and not a consumer class drive. Look at its duty rating. If its rated for 24h/day use its likely an enterprise class drive and the MTBF will be higher.

Does 32mb or 64mb buffer make a difference?

thanks again,
Jeff

[Tom DelRosario]

The Mac Performance Guide site recommends the Hitachi 2 TB drive.

MPG - Desktop Hard Drives - Hitachi 2TB Deskstar 7K2000 / Ultrastar A7K2000

It's available for $150 for 2 TB at OWC.

[Allen White]

Originally Posted by Jeff Troiano

Their drive prices aren't bad.

Consider that brand-name drives in the same price range (or often higher for the same sized drive) are often made of plastic, and often use cheap components (such as for the power supply). I much prefer an OWC drive in an aluminum housing, with its much tougher construction and better quality materials. Their drives also are available with many more cable input options than brand-name drives have, which often offer one input and no more.

I suggest you try one out, since drives are so affordable, and see what you think.

[Nigel Barker]

Before adding external drives don't forget that you can fit four SATA drives internally. If you have only specified a single drive in the Mac Pro tower then it's easy enough to add 3 more drives as you just need a screwdriver to fix them in the drive sleds.

[Jeff Troiano]

Ok, I'm finally picking up internal drives, for my Mac Pro.

Am I correct, in saying, that 1 drive is media storage, 1 is scratch, and one is render drive?

I'm thinking of getting two 2tb drives for media storage, and render. And a 1 tb for scratch. Would this be exceptable?

I was planning on using this configuration as swappable for different projects. With drive capacity being relative to the amount of media used for a project. That way I can store the drives, and just put them back into the computer if I need to revisit that project.

Does this sound about right, or am I missing something. Any guidance and advice is most definitely welcome.

Thanks,
Jeff