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windows_sucks · Oct 17, 2006, 10:12 PM

I am still planning on purchasing the Mac Pro...damn only if the Credit Card company would send me my new credit card so I can purchase all the stuff....Just can't wait any longer: brick: ...it's as good as freaking torture....anyhow I am down to my last obstacle...HARD DRIVES..

I know i'll have 2 hard drives in a Raid 0 Configuration and a third one for backup purposes. I was wondering which would be a faster RAID 0 configuration:

2 x 320Gb Seagate SATA 2 w/ 16mb cache

or

2 x 500gb Seagate SATA 2 w/16mb cache

I have gone to 'barefeats.com' to check out the test they did..but all the test they performed was with 4 hard drives in RAID 0.

Also, is it true that having a hard drive with 16mb cache will decrease the likehood of hard drive failure from the ones having an 8mb cache. Any response is appreciated. Thanks

nerd · Oct 17, 2006, 11:04 PM

If the drives themselves are the same speed in benchmarks then either one would be the best one for you. I don't think the size would make a difference.

I've never heard a larger cache prolongs the life of a drive. I call BS on that one.

Spliffdaddy · Oct 17, 2006, 11:16 PM

If the 320GB and the 500GB drives have the same number of platters - then the 500MB will have greater density and will be faster.

The amount of cache on a hard drive is not related to its longevity of service. Typically the cache is only effective when data is being read&written within the drive itself. If you move files within the drive or defragment the drive (Windows).

16MB is literally nothing. It represents about .4 seconds of bandwidth. The data that leaves the hard drive and moves to the cache won't get there any faster just because the cache is there. Data being written to the drive may see some speed improvement because the SATA bus can dump 16MB of data to the cache faster than the drive can write it to the disk. If the drive can write 35MB/sec, then the potential time savings is about half a second.

windows_sucks · Oct 17, 2006, 11:31 PM

cool..thanks for the quick responses..looks like I'll stick with the 2 x 320Gb Seagate hard drives...and 1 500Gb Hitachi drive for backup purposes.....are there any other brand names besides Seagates and Hitachis that are well known...I've had bad experiences with Maxtors and Western Digitals..drives are pretty much going to be for Video Editing purposes..I wonder what kind of hard drives are utilized by companies such as Pixar and other film post production companies..Any Ideas?..

brokenjago · Oct 17, 2006, 11:53 PM

Seagate owns Maxtor now. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

windows_sucks · 01:06 AM

Yeah you're right Seagate Does Own Maxtor now....i forgot about that......I was reading up on the Hitachi Deskstars 250Gb hard drives where you have to download this tool called "feature tool" if you wish to have the hard drive run in SATA 2 mode...I know they have one for "non-windows" operating systems....Any idea how that would work with Mac OSX Tiger? I have read through the user's guide and it explains its features quite well but nothing regarding Mac OS X or maybe I may have missed it...Instructions given within the user's guide are for "windows" based PC and PC's running Linux?

Tomchu · Oct 18, 2006, 01:33 AM

Originally Posted by Spliffdaddy

If the 320GB and the 500GB drives have the same number of platters - then the 500MB will have greater density and will be faster.

Not necessarily. ;-) Remember that there's track density as well as sector density.

windows_sucks · Oct 18, 2006, 02:14 AM

I was reading up on the Hitachi Deskstars 250Gb hard drives where you have to download this tool called "feature tool" if you wish to have the hard drive run in SATA 2 mode...I know they have one for "non-windows" operating systems....Any idea how that would work with Mac OSX Tiger? I have read through the user's guide and it explains its features quite well but nothing regarding Mac OS X or maybe I may have missed it...Instructions given within the user's guide are for "windows" based PC and PC's running Linux?

mac128k-1984 · Oct 18, 2006, 09:37 AM

I'm using a pair of Maxtor Maxline drives that are raided together and I'm happy with the performance. I've used Maxtor and seagate through the years with nary a problem. I'm not sure what effect seagate owning maxtor will be but all things being equal I think they're good drives.

I think drive selection (with regard to the manufacturer) is less logical and more emotional. I've heard rants against WD and praises for seagate, while other people say the opposite that WD is the best and seagate should be avoided at all costs.

The point is that in this day and age, I think the odds are good that your going to get a good drive, just buy from a reputable dealer that you can easily return the drive if it does have a problem.

merp · Oct 21, 2006, 09:42 PM

I've been using the Maxtor DiamondMax 10/300 and the DiamondMax11/500 for a while. They're fast, cool, and quiet. Used two in the existing slots in my G5 for about a year. Other than a small harmonic that shows up depending on temperature (the disks are about .3 RPM apart, so sometimes I can hear a long ringing/buzzing beat) they gave me decent performance for cheap. I just installed the 5x RAID0 MaxUpgrades kit, and it's stupid fast. 'Course, now my failure rate is 2.5x what it was...

As for manufacturer, I've had good luck w/ Maxtor and Seagate. WD tends to swap mechanicals w/o changing any other identifying marks on the drives, i.e., going from four platters to three, and retaining the same model numbers and revision IDs (I think they refer to the firmware rev. as opposed to hardware). Makes it a pain to get consistency from them. Plus, I got a bunch of attitude the last time I RMA'd them a disk.

Right now Outpost.com/Frys.com has the 6H500F0 Maxtor (SATA-II, 16MB) for $170, shipped (limit 4).

windows_sucks · Oct 24, 2006, 10:16 PM

I purchased 3 x 320Gb Seagate 7200.10 from newegg....Once I get my Mac Pro..I will configure them in a RAID 0 ....until Hitachi starts catering their SATA 3.0 drives to Mac users...for now the only way Mac users can get the 3.0 interface if they use a PC with a SATA controller...hook up the drives...use the feature tool associated with Hitachi and change the inteface setting from SATA 1.5 to SATA 3.0...Why can't they just put a damn jumper on the drives!!! simple as that!!

all2ofme · Oct 28, 2006, 03:08 PM

I just got two WD5000YS drives for my Mac Pro that look to have been a good choice (they're quiet and quite cheap) and I'm now setting them up.

I've started a thread here:
http://forums.macnn.com/82/applicati...ize-photoshop/

...that I'm hoping will be of use to those wondering what a good block size might be for what they're going to be doing with their drives.

Hope your drives arrive soon windows_sucks! It's a good feeling putting them into the Mac Pro

BadApple · Oct 29, 2006, 12:20 PM

I think Raid set up is done with 2 hard drives. MP has 4 bays. So, how do you use the rest of 2 bays? I am not clear on multiple HD set up on one machine. Do you need to install OS X on another drive? Or, one drive with OS is good enough?

merp · Nov 5, 2006, 05:33 AM

Disk Utility supports multiple disks per RAID 0 set. I've got a five-disk stripe that's seen by the system as a single 2.3TB volume that's configured as the startup disk. At 300MB/sec sustained read/write, the performance is amazing, but the downside is that statistically it's five times more likely to have a failure. With that level of risk, I'm rsync'ing to an external disk weekly. It's not the best solution, but it's relatively cheap and stupid fast.

It's possible to set up a ~3TB RAID 0 stripe set startup disk on a Mac Pro just using the internally-supported drive bays.

Mister Elf · Nov 5, 2006, 08:28 PM

I would say the 320s if you don't have a massive storage requirement - you won't notice a speed difference, and if you don't need the space from 2x 500s, that's fine.

Oh, has anyone reported that spam yet?