So it is possible today to use two 1TB blades (slots 23) No reason to have bad experience with raid.

Ive been using Western Digital drives for years but Im wondering how Seagate or one of the other manufacturers stands up.

I need large amounts storage and fast search times so I cannot use the SSD, not until they grow to at least 2Tbs in size.

I do not want a hybrid and it cannot cycle down like one of those green drives as I record music and it needs to be online and available at all times.

An XP941 or SM951 or ebay an Apple PCIe-SSD blade - and Lycom adapter (what I am using) Then get 256GB up to 1TB blade Put all your data on one or more HGST 4TB or larger drive(s) and you can even stripe if you want.

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Blade SSD devices offer same or faster than the Mac Pro 6,1 2013 1100-1500MBsec.

You can put audio tracks on a separate SSD (or Lightroom or anything desired) But system rarely needs 500GB (more than 256GB) as only bare minimum user account (library) would be on boot drive.

I have 3 other 2TB drives inside my computer and another 7 (varying sizes) attached via a Nitro AV Firewire 800 hub.

I also have some more drives attached via a Firewire 400 hub.

I choose not to use a RAID - Ive tried it a number of times and it just does not work for me.

Im just looking to get the fastest and quietest 3Tb or larger bare hard drives.

All of these hard drives then need to have backup drives and right now I have a mirrored clone for each hard drive and I use Super Super to do the file management.

Also, I use OWC hard drive cases that have no fans and work brilliantly for my setup.

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SO - Im just looking to upgrade the size and speed and quiet of the drives, I do not want or need to change my set up.

Thanks.

All manufacturers have some problems with some of their drives, and as you know, drives do not last forever and can fail suddenly.

Some drives, especially those OVER 3TB have problems with reduced screw depth in the screw holes adjacent to the platters.

Newest large drives may have these screw holes moved to a new location (but OWCMacsales sells a new style Internal Drive sled for 2009 and later Mac Pro that works for the new screw holes location).

Internal Drives over 2.2TB may suffer from a bug in Disk Utility ERASE in 10.8.4 and later.

ERASE creates a Logical Volume Group on such drives, and the rest of Disk Utility does not understand what to do with that.

I had heard that 2Tb was the perfect size - to be clear - should I limit my internal drives inside the Mac Pro to 2Tb Can I still use the 3Tb in my OWC external cases I wouldnt need to go any bigger than 3Tb for the external cases unless I knew that they were as efficient and as quiet as the 2Tb drives.

And last question, do you know anything about noise level I have looked at the specs but they seem to be misleading because there is a physical search noise as well as just the overall sound of the platters spinning.

Thats why I as wondering if any of the other companies offered a better-built, quieter drive.

The tiny additional sounds from seeking at these sizes are not very large.

Do not pay extra for rotating drives with SATA III over SATA II -- it is all just specsmanship.

Use cache size as a tie-breaker if all other specs seem about equal.

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