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Time to upgrade my '07 dual core 2x2,66 mac pro
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Join Date: Jun 2002
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Hey folks...
Usually pick up a new mac tower ~4yrs or so and now that im halfway through usually more or less max it to the hilt to last me. Lately havnt had the time focus on trends of who's putting out the most rock solid drives, ram, and what the best setups are...so would appreciate some feedback on my simple upgrade project for the home office...My usage is primarily heavy photography in pshop, lightroom, etc and moderate HD video editing in FCP.
First off think its time finally replace my wrt54g linksys router with one that supports NAS via usb, firewire, or ethernet... Eyeballing the 610n. Goal is to backup my data via time machine over the network now.
So for this effort i'd like to pick up 2 external 1.5tb or 1tb drives here in order to support the time machine backups, suggestions? Currently have a couple seagate 500gb externals in raid 1 via usb directly into my tower for time machine backup purposes and they are low on space. I would most likely raid 1 these as well for redundancy. What's the deal on raid 5 & 10, do the basic osx disc utilities support that yet?
Current spec on the quad core mac pro tower is the stock 250gb drive used only for the OS and apps, plus a couple 500gb seagate drives.
Like to pull the 2 internal seagate drives and replace with 4 of the most reliable 1tb or 1.5tb internal drives on the market, seagate & wd have usually treated me right. Like to run raid 0 on each of the 2 pairs internally for speed so id essentially have about ~2 tb of daily workable space. Are the 2tb drives there yet in terms of reliability & value?
Lastly as for ram, risers a & b both are paired with 512 in each slot for 2gb total. Thinking 8gb would probably be sufficient for my purposes. Where are the best ram deals currently for the quality stuff.
Budget isnt too much of an issue, prefer to pay few bux more quality instead of crap though im a frugal spender. Figure ~100-200ea for the internal drives, bit more for the externals, ~300 for couple 4gb ram modules,~200 for the router...
thx in advance!
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~DJG3
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Posting Junkie
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Houston, TX
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The WRT610 looks like a great router, but don't plan on using the NAS bit much. Almost all consumer NAS is so terribly slow it's painful. See the recent thread about a guy who was thrilled to get 1.1MBps out of his Time Capsule.
2TB drives are close enough to the value point now ($115/TB compared to 1TB drives at $90/TB). Reliability of the initial launch of 1.5/2TB drives was pretty bleak but as far as I know that's resolved now. I'd go with the Seagate over the WD.
RAID10 (or RAID0 + rsync) is a good plan, but you'll probably want a hardware RAID card to really benefit from it (you can get RAID10 out of OS X software RAID, but it's slow during heavy system usage). I assume you have some other backup system in place.
OMG WTF (BBQ?) 2GB RAM? Upgrade to 16 (4x4) for about $450 from Crucial.
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Administrator  Join Date: Jun 2000
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I wish to disagree on the value comparisons of 1+ TB hard drives. I've been watching these drives myself, and holding off. - 1 TB hard drives are going for $75-$85 per TB, and that is for 7200 RPM drives. They are fast, and work well in RAID.
- 2 TB drives are going for $115 per TB, and all of them are 5400/5900 RPM. They're unsuitable for RAID use because of their "green" designation - they are calibrated to spin down aggressively to save power. But doing so causes many RAID controllers to flag them as "failed" - the controllers do not expect drives to spin down so quickly. WD does offer one drive as RAID-suitable (longer spindown, bigger cache), but it's still 5400 RPM and it costs $330 or $165 per TB.
It has leaked out that Western Digital is going to introduce a 2 TB Caviar Black this summer. It looks to be the first 7200 RPM drive in the 2 TB size.
- 1.5 TB drives are going for $73 - $87 per TB, about the same value as 1 TB drives. But of the several models out there, most are green drives at 5400 or 5900 RPM, except the Seagate 7200.11 drive. That unit is 7200 RPM, but though it's been out over a year, it continues to rack up alarming reliability reports.
I expect to use my future big drives in RAID, so the current crop all look unsuitable. Eventually someone will introduce performance drives bigger than 1 TB. Eventually Seagate will introduce bigger 7200 drives based on the 7200.12 line, which has had better reports. If they don't, the solid state drives will presently catch up.
If you don't plan to use them in RAID, then the 1.5 TB drives are good values. The 2 TB drives need to fall a bit more.
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~DJG3
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Posting Junkie
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Originally Posted by reader50 
I wish to disagree on the value comparisons of 1+ TB hard drives. I've been watching these drives myself, and holding off. - 1 TB hard drives are going for $75-$85 per TB, and that is for 7200 RPM drives. They are fast, and work well in RAID.
- 2 TB drives are going for $115 per TB, and all of them are 5400/5900 RPM.
Yag !@#$%^&* 
Originally Posted by DJG3
and i agree on the memory front, not sure how ive survived with only 2gb lately but 8 coupled with a fresh install should be a welcome speed bump 
Why are you trying to cripple a $4000+ (total expense) tower with $200 worth of memory?
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Originally Posted by mduell
...
Why are you trying to cripple a $4000+ (total expense) tower with $200 worth of memory?
common need to leave some room for improvement next yr when it starts to feel slow again  ...picking up 2x8g kits from crucial
reader50 so what are your thoughts on these...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148433
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136284
I appreciate your insight into the next gen drives, but I need something soon. In a couple yrs when the bugs are worked out i'm sure the next machine I get will be slammed full of 2tb drives and some sort of external NAS or fileserver will be taking care of my backups. For now I think 3-4 1tb internal drives should be sufficient, if 1.5's seem solid I may go for that but these days i no longer feel the need to be running the latest tech as I was in college, my setup at home just needs to function and be rock solid.
external seagate...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136321
(tho I just noticed its a 5400rpm drive)
the WD external option, reviews seem bit less encouraging tho
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148337
The other option is to assemble a file server, since feedback on consumer based NAS seems weak. Ideally I want my data backed up elsewhere in my house and not conveniently sitting stacked in externals next to my office desk...
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~DJG3
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Posting Junkie
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I'd go with the Hitachi 1TB... currently sold out, but hopefully back soon. Better IO performance than the Seagates.
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Posting Junkie
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Hitachi sucks. I ordered 16 of their 1TB drives when they came out. 6 were DOA, another three died within weeks. No serious HDD manufacture lets a series like that 'slip'.
Get WD or Seagate. Stay happy.
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Originally Posted by Simon
Hitachi sucks. I ordered 16 of their 1TB drives when they came out. 6 were DOA, another three died within weeks. No serious HDD manufacture lets a series like that 'slip'.
Get WD or Seagate. Stay happy.
perhaps I should rename this thread WD vs Seagate  ..so where are you guys picking up your HDD's now...and I only ship tech stuff fedex priority since UPS likes to play soccer with their pkgs.
Leaning towards these...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148433
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~DJG3
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Administrator Join Date: Jun 2000
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Originally Posted by DJG3
reader50 so what are your thoughts on these...
1 TB Seagate 7200.12
1 TB Western Digital Cavair Black
I appreciate your insight into the next gen drives, but I need something soon. In a couple yrs when the bugs are worked out i'm sure the next machine I get will be slammed full of 2tb drives and some sort of external NAS or fileserver will be taking care of my backups. For now I think 3-4 1tb internal drives should be sufficient, if 1.5's seem solid I may go for that ...
I've been buying the Samsung Spinpoint F1 lately, but don't have a strong brand loyalty. The customer reviews seem to prefer the WD Black by a small margin, but it's also $10 higher. Possibly significant if you're buying a bunch of drives. No strong opinion here - buy what you're comfortable with.
Interestingly, the Hitachi $75 drive reviews do mention a fair number of DOA reports, mirroring Simon's info. I've been tempted by that drive too.
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Junior Member
Join Date: Jun 2002
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decisions...hmm. Generally for personal usage i tend to keep drives for at least 2-3yrs so leaning towards the seagate 7200.12 1tb which the reviews seem to lean in favor of now as whatever issues they had seem to have been smoothed out...
Originally Posted by reader50
I've been buying the Samsung Spinpoint F1 lately, but don't have a strong brand loyalty. The customer reviews seem to prefer the WD Black by a small margin, but it's also $10 higher. Possibly significant if you're buying a bunch of drives. No strong opinion here - buy what you're comfortable with.
Interestingly, the Hitachi $75 drive reviews do mention a fair number of DOA reports, mirroring Simon's info. I've been tempted by that drive too.
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~DJG3
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