OT - RAID Question

Hi,

Sorry if I'm asking in the wrong place.

I don't have the budget for an external [or internal] RAID 5 unit, or similar.

So, my plan is to do the following:

I have 4 x 1TB drives inside my Mac Pro. 1 TB is for the OS, etc. 3 TB's are for data.

I plan to use the 3TB's and make them RAID O.

I have a 3TB External FW drive that will be connected to the Mac at all times which, I run set ChronoSync to run a backup 2 times a day.

This way I can [ostensibly] get the sped benefit of a RAID, and I'll have to be diligent with my backups in case one of the RAID drives fail.

Make sense? Or am I doing something foolish?

Thanks,

Wayne

I believe that the RAID 0 configuration is not just limited to two drives. I still run an older Ciprico RAID (it just won't die!) that has five drives configured as RAID 0.

E=MC2+/-2db

[Rafael Amador] "I may be wrong, but I think that RAID-0 works with two HDs writing half of the data on each drive"

That's actually RAID-1, which mirrors drive 1 to drive 2, thus creating redundancy.

RAID-0 is a group of drives all striped together for max throughput, but no protection or redundancy. You can stripe as many drives as you'd like, with theoretical throughput going up with every drive added - i.e. four drives striped together as RAID-0 have nearly 4X the throughput of a single drive.

David Roth Weiss
ProMax Systems
Burbank
DRW@ProMax.com
http://www.ProMax.com

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

David,

One last question:

Does it matter if I'm using different drive brands [ie, Seagate, Hitachi], and different sizes, [ie, 1TB & 2TB]?

Again, this is for a software RAID 0 inside the Mac Pro.

Thanks,

Wayne

Thanks a lot - that complicates things a little for me, but it's good to know.

Tx,

W

Thank you to all who contributed to this helpful thread.

Wayne

[Rafael Amador] "I thought that that was the only way to set it."

RAID-1 is not something you'd typically want to use for editing anyway Rafa, it's too expensive (you only get 50% useable storage). It's better suited for things like copying SD or P2 cards in the field (because it essentially creates an instant backup), or for system drive redundancy as in the dedicated two-drive RAID-1 enclosure I reviewed here: http://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/Stardom-Pro-Review/1.

And, for the record, the big enclosures you see from all the manufacturers, which are typically configured as RAID-5 these days, could also be configured as RAID-0, just like your 2-drive enclosures from G-Tech, but RAID-5 protected storage has an advantage in that you are safe should any single drive fail. Plus, you only lose about 10% of your storage volume and little only a very slight performance hit in return for the protection you gain.

David Roth Weiss
ProMax Systems
Burbank
DRW@ProMax.com
http://www.ProMax.com

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

As long as the brand, speed, cache and capacity are the same, it should be fine in theory. It's normally fine anyway, but sometimes not- for example WD Black and Green drives; I think you can get them the same spec (ie cache and ALLEGED speed) but the green drives work very differently, and even though they WILL RAID together, they are pretty unreliable when you do (ie takes ages to get started etc). But you should be fine :)

Tom Morter-Laing
Twitter- @TomTheEditor
_________________________________________________
Editor, Certified Apple Product Proffessional, 2010
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Equipment (not for 'bragging', but in case it's relevant to future posts :D): Canon 7D, with Rode NTG2.
iMac 27" intel i7 3.4GHz, 12GB RAM, ATI HD 6970M [2GB GDDR5], 2x G-Tech G-RAID (0) 2TB over Thunderbolt via Sonnet Echo ExpressCard/34 Thunderbolt adapter and Tempo™ SATA ExpressCard/34. Elgato Turbo H264HD.

Hi David,
I use the RAID-0 just for editing (speed).
I keep all the stuff back up in different HDs.
I start to need something bigger but at the moment I'm waiting where the things are going.
I may end up working with PP on an HP, so time to take it easy and don't invest.
rafa

http://www.nagavideo.com