Just now running across this message. The Mac Pro holds 4 mechanical drives and 2 optical drives, all SATA. However, if you only have 1 optical drive, you can put a 5th hard drive in the second optical bay. That's what I did. I have 5 in my system.
Solid state drives cost what they cost. There isn't much of a strategy to getting them cheap. 2 128GB drives cost as much as 1 256GB drive, so buy what you need. I have an 80GB SSD, and OS X, Pro Tools, and synths fit on that just fine. However, I have a 160GB one for my Sonar setup, and that one is fairly full. I have lots more softsynths in Sonar, though. So, it all depends on what all you'll be running. Oh, and when you're pricing drives, don't cheap out. Seriously. You're not buying a stick of RAM, where the differences from one to the next are inconsequential as long as the specs are right. Solid state drives are still very cutting edge stuff. Good ones cost money. If you aren't prepared to spend, then just save your money. If you go out and buy an ultra cheap one, you'll learn that it uses a particularly dense multilevel cell format to get all that space for the cheap cost, and the write speed will be extremely horrible. Or, it might use one of the cheesy low-cost controllers, so the read speed will be poor, it won't support trimming, or who knows what else. Basically, if you get a bad one, then you would have done better with a mechanical hard drive. If you want 128GB, you're going to pay over $200 for it, on the low end. The better drives will prob cost more like $300. Intel has some good ones. Just be careful. Right now, all you need to be a company that sells solid state drives is to buy a huge shipment of 2.5" plastic hard drive sleeves, a shipment of cheap OEM drive controllers from some place like Samsung, and supply your own flash memory from any bargain basement company that will sell it to you. Your USB thumb drives/jumpdrives/etc are solid state disks, too. However, they're MLC flash, stacked heavily, and run through an inexpensive slow controller. If someone put that on a SATA bus, they'd still be as slow. Apple over prices their stuff a bit, but they are selling SLC type solid state drives, at least. Everyone doesn't need that. I use MLC type Intel drives. Intel is one of the few companies making SSDs that actually makes their own drive controller. They're MLC, so the write speeds are just a tad slower than mechanical hard drives, but the read speed and seek times are super fast. For OS and apps, you write them to the drive once, and then read them in to memory over and over. I load the OS and apps on to them, and use mechanical drives for audio. Bryan -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Frank Carmickle Sent: Saturday, September 04, 2010 3:38 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Best hdds configuration running Win7 and OSX on Mac Pro On Sep 4, 2010, at 2:35 PM, RvR wrote: > Hai Frank, > I won't be buying any additional mechanical drives from Apple, much > too expensive like you said. The ssd ones are on the other hand > equally priced as online retailers. Unfortunately for the Mac Pro's > you can only choose an 512gb, which is a little too much for my taste. > So the ssd's I will be buying later on. > 128gb should be enough for each OS including programs and samples I > think, but what is best to do: getting two 128gb ssd's or one 256gb > and then split it? > You say: > "I forgot to mention that you can mount to ssd in each 3.5 bay but > you'd have to add a sata controller for more ports."What do you mean > by that? Do I need another sata controller when putting two ssd's in the Pro? No. If you were going to connect more than four HDs you would need another controller to have enough sata ports to plug them in. > And you wrote when sharing samples across os's, in which fileformat > should the disk be? I am wondering if for example the virtual > instrument Superior Drummer from Toontrack, which is hybrid for use > with Windows and MacOSX, can share one library of samples? And or do I need > two licenses for that? > I don't know about that. Brian probably does. > We cannot call eachother, I am in Europe;-) I can call Europe for just a little bit more than I can call here in the states. My in laws live in Belgium and I provide them with sip services for calling Europe and the US so I shopped around for very good rates. > Thanks for your feedback! Sure! Take care --FC
