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Mac Pro 2009 with 5 drives?

H

highdefw

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 19, 2009
259
0
Hey guys, Looking at getting an 8 core 2009 Mac Pro. I'm looking at this possible configuration:

-1x ssd (Mercury Extreme Pro?) in the optical drive sled as a boot drive
-2x 1TB hdds on a raid 0 config (mainly for media involving Final Cut)
-1x 2TB hdd for storing random files (movies, installers, music, etc...)
-1x 1TB hdd for Time Machine

I already have a 2TB and 1TB hdd. Looking to order the ssd and two identical 1 TBs for the raid soon.

Are there any issues in a setup like this?

Thx
 
Don't forget your 5.25 > 2.5 bracket for the SSD. Other than that, it's plug and play. SATA connections are provided to all 5 bays.
 
OWC seems to offer this 5.25 mount, but it says only for 2006-2008 Mac Pros. Anyone have a working solution for the optical drive? I prefer to have it stable even though it could technically just sit there...
 
highdefw said:
OWC seems to offer this 5.25 mount, but it says only for 2006-2008 Mac Pros. Anyone have a working solution for the optical drive? I prefer to have it stable even though it could technically just sit there...
Click to expand...

Mines sat there quite happily for months now! It's not like you move your Mac Pro frequently :p
 
What would you guys say to 2x 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black drives? I heard they are reliable and fast. Anyone used these in a raid config before?
 
highdefw said:
What would you guys say to 2x 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black drives? I heard they are reliable and fast. Anyone used these in a raid config before?
Click to expand...
You cannot use those in a RAID since they don't support TLER. You need to use the Western Digital RE4.

None of the Western Digital drives where model number ends in "FASS" support TLER, and TLER is absolutely required for use in any RAID array.

Do not use the Caviar Green, Blue, or Black in any RAID array or you will have random failures.
 
Argon21 said:
You cannot use those in a RAID since they don't support TLER. You need to use the Western Digital RE4.

None of the Western Digital drives where model number ends in "FASS" support TLER, and TLER is absolutely required for use in any RAID array.

Do not use the Caviar Green, Blue, or Black in any RAID array or you will have random failures.
Click to expand...

Thank you for sharing this. I was under the impression that just about any drive would work.

So I'm looking at the WD 1TB RE4 internals at $139. If anyone has a Mac Pro raid setup, please share what drives you used.
 
I think you can use the Caviar Blacks in a software RAID, i.e. setting up a RAID 0 array using OS X's Disk Utility. I plan to do that with two Caviar Black 2TB in my 2010 Mac Pro. Software RAID should cope with the temporary timeouts of consumer hard drives that cause hardware RAID to kick the drive out of the array after a short timeout.
 
PenguinMac said:
I think you can use the Caviar Blacks in a software RAID, i.e. setting up a RAID 0 array using OS X's Disk Utility. I plan to do that with two Caviar Black 2TB in my 2010 Mac Pro. Software RAID should cope with the temporary timeouts of consumer hard drives that cause hardware RAID to kick the drive out of the array after a short timeout.
Click to expand...

Are you sure? Because I was planning to use the software provided in the Mac OS to set up my raid.
 
Did anyone ever confirm this? Is it ok to use Desktop edition WD drives with a software RAID in mac os X 10.6.x ?

I would doubt there would be a performance difference either between the desktop and enterprise editions, but if anyone has any info on that also, it would be greatly appreciated!
 
You will be fine. I have two 640 WD blacks in a software raid for ~1.5 years. No problems. Just employ a back up method.
 
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