Hi All

I'm seeking advice/opinions on a secondary drive (250gb) for my Mac Pro.

I currently have a factory shipped Seagate installed and am unsure whether to go another Seagate, WD or Samsung.

Any suggestions would be helpful...

Thanks

I would go for a Seagate. Your Mac Pro should be happy with that because theres already one installed and apple uses them so they must be good

Western Digitals all the way

I've never had a problem with Western Digital. I'd rate Seagate a close second but my experience is that WD are slightly quieter.

Seagate or WD. I prefer Seagates myself, but not for any legitimate reason. Either way, someone will tell you never to buy one or the other.
Samsung... there's probably nothing wrong with them, but you're better off with Seagate or WD.

Samsung are my preffered drive because they run cooler. I've almost gotten rid of all my seagates and replaced them with Samsung drives. Very reliable I've found, and in some cases run substantially cooler than similar Seagate drives. The newer rev 8+ Seagate drives seem to be better as far as heat goes, but Samsung sold me years back.
I'd go with Samsung. But Seagates are pretty reliable too, as long as heat isn't a problem (you have a Mac Pro, so it shouldn't be)

Out of curiosity what drives to Lacie have? They seem to work well.

Lacie historically used Maxtors, but I have heard of them having seagate drives as well.

I would choose Western Digital and Samsung over Seagate due to my past rate of drive failures. Other people with the opposite experience will probably suggest the opposite.

As I said in another thread, the only manufacturer I've never had a dead drive from is Samsung, but I've had many more WD drives and only ever had one die (and it was in a hot hot Tivo over summer). Every Seagate past 1-4gb I've had has died so I don't have any anymore... (Purely because they died)

If I had a Mac Pro I'd be using 500Gb drives, they're pretty cheap now. You can get the Samsung 500Gb for under $200 I believe?

"I wish I had a Mac Pro"

There's something about 500GB in such an important and small device that scares the hell out of me... is this just me?

Why would it scare you? I've got a hell of a lot more storage than 500GB!


15?? years ago I was using a 500mb drive. That was alot of space back then too, it's all relative. Personally I want as much space as I can get, you just need to match your backups to your storage capacity.

EDIT: You realise you can buy 750Gb drives and 1TB drives aren't far away?

I reccommend Seagate-reliable and silent (at least my 80GB/60GB in my PC and mini).

I orginally bought three Seagate drives (Barracuda ES, ST3250620NS) for use in a RAID-0 configuration. For reasons still unclear, but a widely discussed fact nevertheless, Seagate drives (both the ES and the 7200.10 series) perform poorly at random I/O in Mac Pros. I replaced my three drives with Maxtor MaxLine III's (which are quieter btw) and performance went straight up (esp in Aperture).

Before: http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc1=197856

After: http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc1=199677

I realise that Xbench is a rather limited benchmark test, but a widely quoted one, so take it for what it's worth.

Cheers
Steffen.

Where is that problem widely discussed?

It's rare to see Maxtors being promoted these days, I think Seagate bought them recently didn't they?

Glad to hear you sorted your IO problems.

I have a 250Gb WD in my Dual Core G5 work great a little loud at times.

WD and Seagate are only two apple used in MacPro, Samsung failed Apple's H/W test few month ago~~~