A Few Questions On WD Internal Drive

Hi all,

First I would like to thank unixadm for the help on previous questions.

After looking at his link to the Western Digital Drive discussion on Newegg I have come to the conclusion I would like to go with the WD5000YS in my 2.66 Mac Pro.

Question 1: After looking for information on this drive I found many instances of people using this in Mac Pro's (good sign). I also found some confusing information. Most retailers list the single item WD5000YS as working with a PC with no mention of the Mac. They also sell lots of 20 of these same designated WD5000YS drives and list the lots as working on PC and Mac.

Are there different model designations of this WD5000YS that work on both platforms? If so can you give me the Mac model info?

Question 2: I researched the actual physical dimensions of the WD5000YS and this is what was stated:

WD5000YS
Length 147 mm
Width 101.6
Height 26.1 mm or 1.028 in inches

Mac Pro drive bay specs
Width 102 mm
Length 147 mm
height 1.0 inches

Length and width just conform to the Mac specs but the height is a very small amount larger than the stated one inch. Is this difference so minuscule that it is not a concern then or could the height be a problem?

Thanks to all in advance,

Clark

Glad to help.

When looking at SATA drives, pretty much anyone you see in the 3.5" form factor will work in a Mac Pro. Seagate 7200.10 drives have what appears to be a firmware issue with the Mac SATA controller, so I'd avoid those drives for that reason. The only MAC SATA drive is the one that Apple has labeled with their part number. It's physically the same as the non-Apple OEM counterpart. So don't worry about dimensions, just make sure it's SATA and a 3.5" form factor.

The drive you are looking at, the RE (Raid Edition) will work fine. However I'd encourage you to stick with the AAKS non Raid Edition if you are not running raid. When I bought my 400gb RE2 drive, there were a lot of DOA drives in that line. Not sure what it was, but mine worked fine.

I Went With The AAKS

Thanks unixadm,

I did not go with the RAID drive (WD5000YS) as I had originally intended, although I found a great deal on some, and listened to yourself and the tech team at Western Digital, who I finally heard from, and went with the WD5000AAKS drive.

Here is the information I got from WD: "Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support. This drive is not recommended for use in standard home computer systems.

Unlike regular desktop drives, WD RE2 hard drives are engineered and manufactured to enterprise-class standards and include features such as Time-limited Error Recovery, Active Power Save, and RAFF that make them an ideal solution for RAID."

End of that story.

So with the AAKS, I should be able to get up and running as soon as I receive the hardware. Thanks for all the help.

Clark