New Mac Pro - How much storage?

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Level 1

15 points

New Mac Pro - How much storage?

I brought my Mac Pro (2006) for my photography business nearly 8 years ago when my old PC crashed for the last time. Over this time I have increased the internal RAM and added and upgraded the harddisk storage several times. I currently have a 2TB harddisk for my system drive of which about 700GBs is in used for my OS-X and applications.

I am been looking forward to the new Mac Pro since Apple withdrew the big box system from the UK/European market. Although the rubbish bin (trash bin for our american cousins) styling is not really my thing, the specification is very striking and highly desirable. The 4 conventional SATA harddisks are being replaced by a single very fast and much more expensive PCIe flash storage starting at 256GB and configurable up to 1TB. The 256GBs seems a little limiting for a machine aimed at power hungry, professional users that are the target market for the new Mac Pro. One gripe I have always had with Apple OS-X is that the operating system and application software stored on the same storage device with there data and documents. I tend to keep all my photographs on separate drives and more recently on an Thunderbolt/USB3 external drive.

My question is what do others consider to be the minimum storage that should be ordered with the new Mac Pro? What are likely costs of installing the full 1TB of ePCI flash storage?

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.5), iCal and iCloud

Posted on Oct 26, 2013 5:39 AM

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Answer 1

The hatter

Level 9

61,031 points

Oct 26, 2013 6:26 AM in response to awgawg

Thunderbolt and Thunderbolts 2 external storage. You add a TB case, install a PCIe SATA 3 controller and drive more drives inside or externally.

You only need 256GB for the system. PCIe SSD can be added to what you have now but not for booting - but I would replace your current boot drive with an SSD - 128GB is fine, and make sure all your user data and media is on one of your 1-2TB - I findi it hard to imagine just OS and apps using more than even 300GB.

Samsung 250GB EVO runs US$179

www.sonnettech.com and www.macsales.com have Thunderbolt expansion cases.

If the SSD is user upgradeable then a Samsung 1TB SSD would be an option.

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Answer 2

Oct 26, 2013 10:35 AM in response to awgawg

As The hatter implies, the Internal SSD is really only for System, Library, Applications, and the hidden Unix files including Paging/Swap (which are allocated dynamically as needed). User files are moved off to an external drive or drives.

It is expected that you will add an external enclosure, such as a 4-drive ThunderBolt enclosure. At this writing, there is not enough competition, and the ThunderBolt enclosures remain pricey.

alternatives include:

USB3

ThunderBolt to eSATA

ThunderBolt to FireWire800

or a ThunderBolt stunt-box that includes several ports and may include space for one drive, a DVD-Reader plus one drive, or one drive plus a PCIe slot.

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