Is There A Max Drive Capacity Limit For Mac Pro

[Peter Tours]

Eric – here’s what bothers me about the Red drives – IntelliPower had a Green ring to it, eh? (headers would not line up)
Model # Interface Form Factor RPM Capacity Cache
WD30EFRX SATA 6 Gb/s 3.5 Inch IntelliPower 3 TB 64 MB
WD20EFRX SATA 6 Gb/s 3.5 Inch IntelliPower 2 TB 64 MB
WD10EFRX SATA 6 Gb/s 3.5 Inch IntelliPower 1 TB 64 MB

Peter Tours
TnT Video Services, Inc.
Fort Lauderdale, FL

TRI EA5 1974-1977
Convergence ECS1B 1977-1979
Sony BVE 500 1979 – 1984
Datatron Vanguard 1984 – 1993
GVG VPE141 1993 – 1998
Media 100 1995 – 2006
Final Cut Pro 2005 to not too much longer
Adobe Creative Cloud

[Eric Hansen]

wow, i apologize for being so wrong about the Reds. i guess i shouldn’t trust what i read on a company’s website.

i wonder why WD would tout an Intellipower 5400 RPM drive as their RAID drive?

still recommending the Ultrastars. been using them for years in 24/7 RAIDs with no issues. they’re expensive because they’re the best. 5 year warranty. HGST has a no questions asked return/replacement policy.

e

Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv

[Ricardo Reyes]

I’ll add that the Hitachi also have a higher MTBF, there rated at 2 Million hours vs the WD RE which is 1.4 Million hours. I’ve worked with both drives on a daily basis and either one would do great in a RAID environment.

Ricardo Reyes
Areca Technologies – US Channel
Ricardo@ArecaUS.com
http://www.Areca.com.tw

***** RAID is not a substitute for proper and regular backups *****

[Eric Hansen]

Ricardo

i’m surprised to see the writes so much faster than the reads in your tests. is that the case, or are the number flipped?

thanks

e

Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv

[Ricardo Reyes]

Nope, they are correct. We start seeing faster read performance with more drives.

For example, the same test using 8x Hitachi Ultrastar drives in RAID 5 show the following.

Read – 710MB/s
Write – 855MB/s

Ricardo Reyes
Areca Technologies – US Channel
Ricardo@ArecaUS.com
http://www.Areca.com.tw

***** RAID is not a substitute for proper and regular backups *****

[Alex Gerulaitis]

[peter tours] ” I was concerned over whether the jump from 3 to 6gb/s and 32 to 64mb cache would be tolerated.”

Far as I know, 3G vs. 6G is a non-issue as either bus is much faster than the drive’s media transfer rate. Fast spinning drives like WD RE and Ultrastars transfer at about 160MB/s while SATA 3G tops out at about 300MB/s. Upping the bus speed to 6G does very little to improve performance – unless you’re dealing with external drives (port multiplier eSATA) or SSDs.

Just my two cents.

Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA

[Rainer Wirth]

I would keep the system drive and replace the three others with 3x4TB Hitachi Ultrastars (now WD). You system will provide enough power to handle DVCProHd or any other HD material except 4K.

Cheers

Rainer

factstory
Rainer Wirth
phone_0049-177-2156086
Mac pro 8core
Adobe,FCP,Avid
several raid systems

[Shawn Koppenhoefer]

??And this suggestion would then use SoftRaid or Apples Software Raid,.. since the Apple Raid Controller can NOT handle >2.2TB. Best is 4x2TB

??

[Peter Tours]

Not software RAID, you were right that it’s the Apple Raid card. 2tb limit is what I suspected. What about 3mbs vs 6 mbs.

According to Blackmagic drive speed app, my write speed is around 240mbs and my read speed is slightly higher – would this improve with a software raid? Otherwise I still see no benefit from removing it.

Thanks!

Peter Tours
TnT Video Services, Inc.
Fort Lauderdale, FL

TRI EA5 1974-1977
Convergence ECS1B 1977-1979
Sony BVE 500 1979 – 1984
Datatron Vanguard 1984 – 1993
GVG VPE141 1993 – 1998
Media 100 1995 – 2006
Final Cut Pro 2005 to not too much longer
Adobe Creative Cloud