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Hello!

I'm looking to add 3 internal drives (not in a raid) to my new mac pro to use for virtual music instrument software.

I've decided to go with either the Seagate 1TB (5yrs warranty) or the Samsung Spindisk 1TB. (3yrs warranty)

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)

Also, does it matter if you purchase OEM versus retail. As far as I can tell, the only difference is the box they come in?

Thanks for any insights!

Enterprise class often implies higher quality. Read the specs on MTBF and the like.

Personally I am an individual buyer, not a reseller. I want retail packing and configuration, retail support. No OEM drives for me.

Saving a few bucks on mass storage at the risk of lower quality or support or longevity or whatever is not something I want to do.

-Allen Wicks

I have bought plenty of hard drives over the years and have never had any problems with Seagate drives. I have only had problems with WD.

I'm partial to Seagate. The ES drives are nice... but probably overkill. ES drives are designed to be reading and writing almost 24 hours a day... not to say that the 7200.11 can't, cause they can... but they're designed to be consumer drives... turn off and on, etc. I'm guessing you're not a robot and you're not going to be using the computer 24/7.

(here's info on ES drives: Seagate Technology - Barracuda� ES Hard Drives)

Do you need bandwidth or IO performance? Bandwidth buy Seagate, IOs buy Hitachi.

Regular or enterprise? If you consider your usage to be a high duty environment or you like to keep drives forever or you won't notice the price difference, buy enterprise, otherwise buy regular.

OEM or Retail? Whichever is cheaper. The drive either works (yay) or it doesn't (RMA) and the manufacturer isn't going to provide any useful support to you.