• Apple OS X

  SATA drives

  Posted by Charles Jones on February 12, 2010 at 2:50 pm

  can anyone recommend the best, tried and true, SATA drives? I have the Mac Pro 2 x 2.26 Quad Core (2009) I want to stripe three drives internally – I need to maximize performance capabilities and need reliable media. I’m using G-Tech FW drives for both desktop and mobile setup. Really need a performance boost – lot’s of multicam projects in HD – G Tech is great and reliable, but FW on the desktop just isn’t cutting it anymore.

  I checked the write ups on the Hitachi, Seagate and WD SATA drives- and they seem to have lots of problems – anyone have positive results/feedback with their setup?

  Thanks

  CJ,
  MOTU UltraLite, MOTU 2408mk3 FCP3 Studio, MOTU AudioDesk, EX1 and EX3,Letus Elite, Zeiss primes, Mac Pro 8core, 2.26G, 15″ MBP 3.06G

  Greg Barringer replied 16 years, 2 months ago 4 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Pasi Koivisto

  February 14, 2010 at 8:40 am

  I would have a look at barefeats.com, they do a lot of benchmark tests.

  Having said that, maybe it’s time to have a look at buying a good, big, fast raid. Depending on how many projects you have going this might be the right course of action.

  /Pasi
  —
  Editor, Colorist.
  Mac Pro, 8×3 Ghz, 8 Gb ram, ATI Radeon HD 4870, KONA 3, Sony PVM20L4, Tangent Devices Wave.
• 

  Charles Jones

  February 14, 2010 at 8:27 pm

  Thinks for the link, and to add – that’s all I work on is RAID – just want to stripe a few SATA drives, so I’m looking for feedback on experiences with these drives.

  Thanks a bunch,
  CJ

  CJ,
  MOTU UltraLite, MOTU 2408mk3 FCP3 Studio, MOTU AudioDesk, EX1 and EX3,Letus Elite, Zeiss primes, Mac Pro 8core, 2.26G, 15″ MBP 3.06G
• 

  Micah Mcdowell

  February 15, 2010 at 9:21 pm

  I think you’ll have as many opinions as replies regarding the “best” drives, so you might want to do some Googling for statistics if you want meaningful answers.

  My meaningless opinons: I’ve got a RAID of Seagates at home that work great and I have a Hitachi RAID pair in my work system that work great (and they’re 5 years old). I’ve seen some Maxtors fail, and I’ve had others that I couldn’t kill.

  If I was going to go buy new ones tomorrow, I’d probably get the Western Digital Caviar Black series since they seem to have a lot of bang for the buck. I’ve used them as system drives in a couple machines with good results.
• 

  Greg Barringer

  February 16, 2010 at 3:24 am

  I added Three 1TB WD Black Caviar for my ’09 Mac Pro. The work very well

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