MacPro Internal HDs

Anyone jumped in on the 3TB internal HDs yet or are you sticking with the 2TB for the meantime....which ones have you gone for because I'm going to be upgrading my internals soon.

Thanks

Black Caviar

I have been using 4 x 3tb 7200rpm seagate barracuda's in a RAID 0 for over a year with no problems. When the price of HD's were so high last year I bought a batch of external seagate drives that when ripped apart had the much more expensive internal drives in them.

Think about a nice SSD 500 GB or 750GB for your system drive...it'll smoke. Been using mine for a year now...SSD system, SSD scratch stuff the rest with the largest TB seagates you can find.

Yes this is the situation I'm trying to fathom out. Do I either upgrade my existing MacPro (early 2008 which is getting old now) keep waiting for a 'possible' new one OR buy a rMBP as my main editing machine and run external displays of it.

Tough one.

I am in same situation, I have 4 MPs all 2006,2007 which are still fine for general work and long form projects in FCP7 but unusable with FCPX.
I purchased a MBP retina recently to handle FCPX projects as a interim work station until the new MP or iMacs arrive. The MBP is perfect for FCPX, motion 5 and also runs resolve 9 so very happy with performance.
I have a BMD intensity shuttle via TB for monitoring and looking to get a TB Raid.
What I really love about the MBP is the ability to edit HD projects from pocket USB3 drives.
This makes an incredible versatile package for remote editing away from studio.
I would highly recommend getting a MBP retina while you wait for Apple to release the next gen machines as it will integrate nicely as a mobile workhorse.
Cheers

Good to hear regarding the rMBP:-)

I am running a 2008 MP with the top ATI Apple is selling for MPs now, and a new rMBP. For serious heavy work, the MP with more powerful GPU and more RAM outperforms the SSD rMBP.

Will be adding a T'bolt drive tomorrow and will report back with side by side comparisons this weekend.

Try those SSD's in your MP and see what happens. I don't use any laptops.
BTW...just bought a 24 TB RAID 5 OWC drive running SATA 3 with a new Sata 3 controller for the 12 core. Now this really smokes !

Well, the 5870 GPU upgrade is the last money I'm putting into this old Mac Pro. SSD's simply are not large enough, and way too expensive for me to consider in a Mac Pro at this point. I have four 2TB drives full of stuff. 8TB of SSD is just way too much money at this point in time. The speed would be fun, but it's not necessary at this point in time.

Yes, 8 TB of SSD's would be pricey for sure. I was just suggesting a 500GB for the system drive and a 750GB scratch drive. This handles large projects very well. At project completion everything can be dumped to external esata drives for storage.

same here, I am just going to get through with my machines as long as possible.
I am waiting for the new 27" iMac with Usb3 & TB this will be a great general workstation with second monitor, TB Raid, max ram etc, this combo will handle a lot of our production work.
Then wait to see if we get a stunning new MP as our heavy load workhorse.
I must say however I have had minimal problems with my 4 MPs which have worked non stop 6 days a week for over 5 years. ROI for these machines is amazing when you consider they are the heart, brains and soul of everything we do in the digital creative world.

I'd die to have SSD drives in my Mac Pro, but even at 750 GB they won't hold what our 2TB existing SATA drives are already storing.

But Ben do you have to access ALL that data ALL the time? We have a number of clients/projects on the go pretty much all the time with 100's of GBs of data but we don't have to have every file accessible everyday. This is obviously dependent on how many clients/projects/data size?

I think I might go for a SSD system and Scratch & hopefully a rMBP, just can't wait to get everything fully TB connected because the only draw back at the minute (which is related to the above point) is transferring data on and off the scratch disc via USB2. Sometimes it can take a long time and also gives the MP system disc a hit.

Yes, I have access to all of that data all the time, it's on internal SATA drives. Why would I not?

Not sure what you mean by a Scratch drive, since we don't use a dedicated scratch drive with X. I have projects and events on all three non-OS drives. I use Event Manager X and Disk Images to manage things.

I have a T'bolt drive arriving tomorrow and will be running tests between the rMPB w/T'bolt drive and the Mac Pro on it's internal SATA drives, this weekend. Will be interesting to see how much more RAM and more powerful GPU on the MP will compare to T'bolt, SSD, and newer CPU.

Again, we do not see putting SSD's in a Mac Pro giving us that much performance increase to justify the decrease in storage capacity and really high costs. That's just my studio, though. It may be worth it to others.

We haven't got all of our data on our system because there isn't enough space for it all on the drives we have installed (work machine) my personal home MP however has space but also spread on external cheaper USB storage drives.
I was only referring to a scratch disc because we are still only using FCP6 on the work machine so that still applies there. My personal MP has both installed and I still use both.
Interesting thread though, very interested regarding the TB tests.

Oh hell, let's make this more complicated. :woohoo:

We should hear about a new iMac with T'bolt soon, too! How will that change things?

I'd love to see super high end GPU rMBP with a 17" screen and dual 1TB SSDs internally. I'd love to see an iMac with super high end GPU, 32 GB RAM, dual 1TB internal SSDs. Hey, an old man can dream...

I would take a guess and say it won't be that long until your (and many others) dreams will be reality!

I don't see those models becoming that high end. The trend isn't there for Apple, from what I've seen the past couple of years. But, no one knows until they make future announcements. Still, a up to date Mac Pro is really desperately needed.

The new iMacs are only a few weeks away from release so this will certainly be a hit with most production companies as many have started using iMacs now as main cutting stations, so add USB3 and TB into the mix and these will become very powerful edit and finish stations.