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RAID 0 vs VelociRaptor

B

bobbydaz

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 24, 2009
194
67
UK
SSD drive for my System/Apps, but looking at the best performance option for my working files drive. Will be working with Adobe Creative Suite, mainly Photoshop with files ranging from 100mb to 1gb.

Performance/reliability is more important to me than storage capacity as I never have more than 200gb of data at any one time so for my budget I can get the following:

1x 600gb VelociRaptor £209

or

2x 1TB WD Cavier Black £146 as RAID 0

Any advice would be welcome.
 
RAID 0 will be noticeably faster but less reliable because if one drive dies, all data is lost. This isn't an issue if you have a good, solid backup plan. If you have a good backup, then I don't see a reason to get the VelociRaptor as it's more expensive and slower
 
If you are looking for the best performance, then go with the RAID 0. If you are looking for reliability, then a single Velociraptor will probably be orders of magnitude more reliable than 2 standard drives in a RAID 0, but you will sacrifice overall speed, and a good backup strategy will mitigate any reliability concerns of the RAID.

That said, I chose to set up my data drives as a RAID 0 and I am very happy.
 
RAID 0 Raptors

I have used 2 Raptors in RAID 0 as a boot drive for 4 years without a single problem. Easy to back up/clone to an external drive. I did replace them with an OWC 200 GB Pro SSD - and found not much of a difference in real life. I am sure it is faster, but not nearly the same as from the usual single regular drive most people upgrade to
 
How are you all making a Raid0 in the mac pro? Just using the drive bays and the software raid in OSX, or are you using some sort of PCI card or external SATA enclosure? And if so, how do you boot to the raid0?
 
bobbydaz said:
SSD drive for my System/Apps, but looking at the best performance option for my working files drive. Will be working with Adobe Creative Suite, mainly Photoshop with files ranging from 100mb to 1gb.

Performance/reliability is more important to me than storage capacity as I never have more than 200gb of data at any one time so for my budget I can get the following:

1x 600gb VelociRaptor £209

or

2x 1TB WD Cavier Black £146 as RAID 0

Any advice would be welcome.
Click to expand...

Put your working files on the SSD and your apps/os on a 1TB drive if you do not have the space for it all on the SSD.

Buying an SSD so you can save 5 seconds on bootup and 1/2 second opening up an app never made sense.

Either go 100% SSD or go SSD for you working files or stick to a hard drive.
 
Sean Dempsey said:
How are you all making a Raid0 in the mac pro? Just using the drive bays and the software raid in OSX, or are you using some sort of PCI card or external SATA enclosure? And if so, how do you boot to the raid0?
Click to expand...

I'm using internal drive bays and the software RAID built in to OSX. Personally, I wouldn't use a RAID 0 as a boot drive, but that's just me.
 
hugodrax said:
Put your working files on the SSD and your apps/os on a 1TB drive if you do not have the space for it all on the SSD.

Buying an SSD so you can save 5 seconds on bootup and 1/2 second opening up an app never made sense.

Either go 100% SSD or go SSD for you working files or stick to a hard drive.
Click to expand...

So is it okay to use an SSD for frequent writes? I seem to be finding conflicting information about what you should or shouldn't put on an SSD. Are people just being a touch over fussy about what you do with an SSD compared to how we treated our HDDs?

As my working files are up to 200gb an SSD would be very expensive so I'm looking for the next best thing.
 
the two disc raid 0 is going to be quicker to get your files on and off out of those two options :)


for speed of working in PS curious how much memory you have ? and are you on CS5 and Snow Leopard yet ?
 
bobbydaz said:
So is it okay to use an SSD for frequent writes? I seem to be finding conflicting information about what you should or shouldn't put on an SSD. Are people just being a touch over fussy about what you do with an SSD compared to how we treated our HDDs?

As my working files are up to 200gb an SSD would be very expensive so I'm looking for the next best thing.
Click to expand...

the SSD have limited writes ? but at the same time they are not so fragile and lots of people have been using them for a while now ?

for scratch ? who knows but they have warranties ?
 
one other thought is to keep all this in your original thread :) since their is a lot of cross over now :) just a thought for the future :)
 
bobbydaz said:
So is it okay to use an SSD for frequent writes? I seem to be finding conflicting information about what you should or shouldn't put on an SSD. Are people just being a touch over fussy about what you do with an SSD compared to how we treated our HDDs?

As my working files are up to 200gb an SSD would be very expensive so I'm looking for the next best thing.
Click to expand...

Performance is expensive. Thats life. But are you having performance issues to begin with or is this all about the benchmarks and geekpoints.

Too many people focus on the wrong things when it comes to performance. Do you have enough RAM so you do not page? Have you optimized your harddrive?

And whats the point of an SSD if your gonna be afraid to write to it. Makes it useless since your gonna need to read/write to the storage anyhow. If you really need the performance go SSD 100% and toss the drive every 3-5 years when it dies.


I say RAM is the biggest factor. Too many people posting about buying and SSD and using a computer with only 2GB of ram :D
 
ditto the above :)

as I say having 16 or better 24 is going to keep you off the SSD much more :)

also you pay say $2800 or $3600 for a base machine no ram throw 24 gigs in you are about $3600 or $4400 ? to throw in a $120 SSD to get a bump in PS in the scope of things is not to bad :)
 
I use a 120GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD as my Boot Drive, and then use two Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm LP 1TB drives as a 2TB RAID 0 array for all my media files, iTunes, movies, and downloads folder. So far, it's working great.
 
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