Subscribe to
Posts
Comments
NSLog(); Header Image

1.0 TB Drives

I'm looking to get a few (perhaps four) 1.0 TB drives for my Mac Pro (ouch). Does anyone have any suggestions on which kind to get and where to get them?

Also, any suggestions on what to do with four 500 GB SATA hard disks? The Drobo takes SATA drives, right?

9 Responses to "1.0 TB Drives"

  1. Drobo baby! With FW800 built in now, it rocks even harder. Add a DroboShare and turn it into a nice little NAS.

  2. If you have AirportExpress, you don't need to add DroboShare... just make it a shared disk via USB.

    I have my (somewhat noisy) Drobo in the spare bedroom/office and I use TimeMachine over the wireless network.

    Works like a champ.

    The DroboDashboard does not work, but who cares about that silly indicator?

  3. Drobo is awesome! I've got two of them, and a DroboShare. Sooo great.

    I use my first Drobo as an iTunes storage volume. 900+ GB of music, movies and TV shows plugged into the DroboShare. iTunes runs on my MacBook Pro loading the library files which are also stored on the Drobo.

    I've got two Apple TVs, and the Drobo is able to stream to both of them with no problem. The only sign of lag is a short wait before the stream begins. From then on it's smooth sailing. Truly a great device.

  4. Yes, I know the Drobo is good. I really wanted suggestions on which 1.0 TB drives to buy (and perhaps where to get them). 🙂

  5. Yeah I suppose I didn't approach the question at all, did I? Sorry about that.

    I recently bought two 1TB WD Caviar GP drives. GP is what Western Digital claims to be Green Power. The bullets on the back of the box say "Reduced power consumption by up to 40% - Environmentally responsible. - Cool running."

    I really don't know how to measure the power consumption, or the environmental responsibility. But by the touch they are definitely much cooler. As you can probably guess, these drives are in my Drobo. The front of the drives used to be too hot to touch when the Drobo was working. Now they're just a little warm. I've also noticed less noise as a result of the fan not being run at full speed so often.

    Here's a link to a review by someone better than me at reviewing hard drives - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/wd-caviar-gp,1703.html

  6. [quote comment="48423"]I really don't know how to measure the power consumption, or the environmental responsibility. But by the touch they are definitely much cooler.[/quote]

    Well, if they are indeed cooler, you've just measured the power consumption 🙂

    (i.e. Due to the laws of thermodynamics, all energy used by the drive eventually turns into heat. Less heat = Less energy used)

    As to the original question: I've got two of the same 1TB WD drives in a mirrored RAID configuration and have had zero problems so far.

  7. I like OWC, and the WD GP series are very nice.

    http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Western%20Digital/WD10EACS/

    $199/each is a pretty common price. You can go cheaper (around $135/each) if you want to go Maxtor or something, but if you care about your data, i'd spend a little more.

    🙂

  8. Costco was recently selling Seagate 1 GB SATA drives for $199 from their website. If I had a Drobo or a Mac Pro, that's what I'd be buying.

  9. The fastest 1TB drive I have had my hands on is the Samsung F1 drive. The coolest is the WD GreenPower. Personally, I'd install those Samsung, since we have (at work) sold hundreds of Samsung drives and only got back a small handful for repair since their introduction. On the other hand, those GP drives run cooler and even though in the Mac Pro drives are well cooled, those might have a longer lifecycle. The Samsung are no "server" disks, meaning their auto-recovery from read/write errors is not time-limited and thus might fail in a RAID due to time-out. In Software RAIDs, this should be the case, I assume.

    (I have seen read and write rates in excess of 100MB/s realworld on those F1, on a G5 Dual 2.0, not even a Mac Pro.)

    (Yes I dont like Hitachi drives and I also dont like Seagate but it is common fact that you don't like drives that failed on you personally in the past *ggg*)