Jeff B
Active member
I am looking for a 2TB external hard drive for my Mac Pro (Quad Core 3GHz) and have a question. The Mac Pro has a 500 GB internal boot drive and three internal 500 GB drives RAIDed into a single 1.5TB drive. I would use an external 2TB drive for backing up the 1.5TB daily with Apple's Backup and will use it for Time Machine when I install Leopard. The computer is used primarily for Final Cut Pro Studio.
Costco has a Western Digital external 2TB drive with Fire wire 800 (800mb/s) for $600 and a Western Digital external 1TB drive with eSATA (3000mb/s) for $300. Either way it's $600 for 2 TB. I would need to purchase an eSATA Extender Cable to utilize the two extra SATA ports found on the Mac Pro's logic board for $25.
The question is: Could I connect two of the 1TB eSATA drives with the eSATA Extender Cable and make them a single 2TB RAID with Apple's Disk Utility... and would you recommend doing that over getting the 2TB drive which is 1/4 the speed and the same price?
Please see the details below and thank you for your help. I asked the Geniuses at three different Apple Stores and got 3 different answers.
2TB - My Book Pro Edition II (Firewire 800) $600
http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=341&language=en
1TB - My Book Home Edition (eSATA) $300
http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=357&language=en
eSATA Extender Cable $25
http://www.newertech.com/products/esata_cable.php
Costco has a Western Digital external 2TB drive with Fire wire 800 (800mb/s) for $600 and a Western Digital external 1TB drive with eSATA (3000mb/s) for $300. Either way it's $600 for 2 TB. I would need to purchase an eSATA Extender Cable to utilize the two extra SATA ports found on the Mac Pro's logic board for $25.
The question is: Could I connect two of the 1TB eSATA drives with the eSATA Extender Cable and make them a single 2TB RAID with Apple's Disk Utility... and would you recommend doing that over getting the 2TB drive which is 1/4 the speed and the same price?
Please see the details below and thank you for your help. I asked the Geniuses at three different Apple Stores and got 3 different answers.
2TB - My Book Pro Edition II (Firewire 800) $600
http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=341&language=en
1TB - My Book Home Edition (eSATA) $300
http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=357&language=en
eSATA Extender Cable $25
http://www.newertech.com/products/esata_cable.php