8TB HGST Ultrastar He8 Hard Drive in 2009 Mac Pro Internal Bay (DiskTester fill-volume)

2016-04-17 • SEND FEEDBACK |
Related: diglloydTools, DiskTester, hard drive, HGST, Mac Pro, Other World Computing, RAID

Get HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 Hard Drive and OWC Thunderbay 4 RAID-5 edition at OWC.

Some video users still favor the 2009/2010 Mac Pro tower, which has four internal bays (and two more with appropriate brackets), making it possible to have up to six internal drives. With 8TB drives, that means 48TB is possible in the 2009/2010 Mac Pro, all internal. Or 32TB using only the four standard bays.

MPG previously tested the 8TB HGST Ultrastar He8 Hard Drive in the OWC Thunderbay 4 attached to the 2013 Mac Pro. Questions previously not answered by that testing include whether the 8TB drives work at all in the 2009 Mac Pro, and if so, whether behavior and performance are as expected.

The good news is that the HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8 work great in the 2009/2010 Mac Pro, including seeing no sleep/wake issues. Performance is solid, as can be seen in the graph below. It is within 5-10MB/sec of the tests on the 2013 MacPro.

There is one minor catch: the drive bolt holes are changed in some newer-model drives like the He8. To mount the drives in the internal bays, use the nifty OWC Hard Drive Bracket
for 2009-2012 Mac Pro. The bracket is compatible with both newer and older drive mounting holes (simply use the screws in the matching holes for the drive).

See also:

• Reader Question: Drive Speed of 6TB vs 8TB Hard Drives (VIDEO USERS: some neat tricks here for guaranteeing high drive speed)
• Reconfiguring Storage to use 8TB Drives, Data Integrity Critical
• HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8: RAID-4, RAID-0, RAID-5 Scalability
• Real-World Drive Speed with 8TB HGST Ultrastar He8 Hard Drive (DiskTester fill-volume)

Performance across 8TB capacity of HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8, internal bay of 2009 Mac Pro