Q: Internal hard drives for Mac Pro, what would you recommend? I have been a big fan of Hitachi for the last few years, but know WD now runs them and wondering if I should still go there or are they kinda all the same?
A: Hitachi Ultrastar and Western Digital Caviar Black are my go-to drives, especially for RAIDs. They have 5 year warranties and don’t ask any questions when you want to return a drive.
If it’s a little-used drive, such as for iTunes or Time Machine, then Hitachi Deskstar or WD Caviar Green. I’ve also had good luck with Samsung, but haven’t bought one in awhile. They are “green” drives, so they spin down and such to save power. WD calls it Intellipower. Some models run at less than 7200RPM also. They don’t work well as editing or boot drives and don’t work at all in RAIDs (the energy efficient spin-downs will make the RAID unstable and may go offline). But they’re great for things like iTunes, Time Machine or archive (shelf) drives.
If you’re looking for a boot drive, OWC SSD all the way!
Do NOT buy anything from Seagate!!!!
EDIT: I just checked Western Digital’s website and they have moved the Caviar Black to the Desktop line and just call it “Black”. They no longer recommend it in RAIDs. They now have a new series called “RE” for RAID use. I think I see a much longer article about hard drives coming…