SAS vs SATA in MacPro

[Ashley Aitken]

Hi Kevin (et al.),

A little knowledge can be dangerous, but I am sure someone will not-so- 
gently correct me if I am wrong, so here I go:

On 11/04/2008, at 4:59 AM, Kevin Callahan wrote:

>> They come in SAS or SATA.
>>
>> Is there a reason I should choose one over the other?  When I look  
>> in my profiler for the MacPro, I see that both drive types are  
>> supported.
>>
>
> looking at the specs, the SATA version has a 32MB cache and the SAS  
> version has a 16MB cache.

I think you will find that the SAS (serially attached SCSI) drives  
will generally be smaller, faster, server grade, and more expensive  
whereas the SATA drives will be larger, slower, and have non-server  
grade options making them less expensive.

Unless you are running an enterprise system or have really high-end  
video demands then I would suggest a RAID of SATA drives would be fine  
(RAID does stand for inexpensive drives, after all) and save you quite  
bit of money.

Of course, you'd want to do the calculations to see that the RAID can  
handle your bandwidth requirements etc.

Cheers,
Ashley.



--
Ashley Aitken
Perth, Western Australia
mrhatken at mac dot com
Skype Name: MrHatken (GMT + 8 Hours!)