Internal drives for new music computer

[midilance]

Buying a new 8 core Mac Pro with room for 4 drives. The prices have come down so low. 1 TB drives for $120. However, there is a speed difference between 500 GB (around 8.5ms) and 1 TB (11 ms). Is this much of an issue? Should I go 500, 750 or 1 TB? I'll have 10 GB of ram. DP 6.02, lots of VI's.

[johnnytucats]

I don't have the answer for you but you might consider getting large ones and using a couple of the drives for "backup only".

[midilance]

Drive one will be for the boot drive
Drive two will be for sample libraries
Drive three will be for audio projects
Drive four will be for video projects.

I'll have external backup drives for all of them.

[twistedtom]

I put 1T drives in 2 spots, the speed is the same I think. You can go to the drive makers and check this out. I did a lot of research and feel the best drives are the WD black and the Sea gate's. The WD Green is not as fast as the Black. Read about the sea gate failure problem here. I got 2 of them and they were not on the bad list so I think they are past this problem, just make sure your not getting an old one some one is dumping. For the last spot in my drive bay I am going to put a WD Black 1TB, they spec out good for a few bucks more.
I strongly suggest you go to the WD and Seagate sites and look at the different drives and what the specs are for them each offers a number of 1T drives and they have some differences.

[midilance]

Looks like the WD Black is a pretty good choice. Do you think it has any advantage over the Seagates?

[HCMarkus]

Check out Storagereview.com for all sorts of HD info and reviews.

As I think about it, (and recognizing allowances will have to be made depending on one's production approach), audio recording tends toward longer, uninterrupted streams of data and VI's call for lots of random access and briefer data deliveries. As such, the Raptors (small and expensive they are, but their 10k platter RPM rules!) are tops for VI and Boot Drive applications, and the Hitiachi 1 GB drives would serve very nicely for audio and backup work. I think we are well beyond the "Deathstar" days of IBM (Hitachi's predecessor) drives.

[twistedtom]

You can get smaller drives that run at 15000rpm.
The Seagates are slightly less noisy according to reports; Seagate and WD measure the sound in different formats so I would have to find a way to convert one to compare what they say is the spec. I read the Hitiach is makes more noise as It has more platters.
The manufactures web sits tell you sustained and burst data transfer specs. I think the WD Black and the Seagate’s do every thing well.