Boot disk, Raid, and Final Cut?

[NRose8989]

I've heard somewhere that its not good to have your scratch disk set on your boot drive, is this true? Final Cut performance is most important, but i would also like to archive my DVD collection to be a media server to my apple tv etc. so storage for all that has to come from somewhere.
NOTE.. i would like to reserve my 4th bay for windows only drive and a software raid will be used for these.

what would you think is a better set-up,

3x internal drives (all of the same model, probably WD 640's) set in raid 0 (both serve as boot drive and scratch disk) occupying bays 1, 2, and 3. In this set-up, everything (DVD's, music, photos, final cut media) would be stored on this array.

OR

1x large boot drive (probably 1TB) in bay 1 and 2x internal drives (probably WD 640's) in bays 2 and 3 set in raid 0. In this set-up, DVD's, music, and photos would be stored on the boot drive, while the raid array would only be used as a scratch disk and store final cut media files

again performance is most important and don't worry, i have a external back-up solution for this. Thanks in Advance.

 

[matt321]

I like option two better. You will get better performance with 3 drives in raid 0 but too many points of failure, IMO.

 

[NRose8989]

I like option two better. You will get better performance with 3 drives in raid 0 but too many points of failure, IMO.

ya I'm in a bit of a delemia, if i went with a all raid setup (option 1), i would have to get a more elaborate back up solution like a drobo but unfortunatly it's not a firewire array, only USB. and i heard that you can't apply firmware updates while booted on a raid, is this true? then i would have to get another drive with OS X install on it just to apply firmware updates.

but having a super fast boot raid sounds very appealing.

aside from more points of failure, does having your scratch disk set on your boot drive effect performance?

ugh so many decisions. I probably will get 3 WD 640's then experiment with different setups.

 

[junior77]

My recommendation....

(4) drives, WD640's

1 - Boot Drive
2 - Music / Photos / Video (i.e., HOME folder)
3/4 - Raid 0 for scratch disk, projects in work.

External 1 GB Time Machine as an added security bonus.

 

[JeffDM]

ya I'm in a bit of a delemia, if i went with a all raid setup (option 1), i would have to get a more elaborate back up solution like a drobo but unfortunatly it's not a firewire array, only USB. and i heard that you can't apply firmware updates while booted on a raid, is this true? then i would have to get another drive with OS X install on it just to apply firmware updates.

That used to be true, but I think later firmware updates worked from stripe RAIDs. When the earlier updates didn't work, I booted from an external FW drive to install & apply the update. Later updates didn't seem to need that.

My recommendation....

(4) drives, WD640's

1 - Boot Drive
2 - Music / Photos / Video (i.e., HOME folder)
3/4 - Raid 0 for scratch disk, projects in work.

External 1 GB Time Machine as an added security bonus.

Sounds about right, though I don't know if scratch disk should be the same drives as your video projects. I can't help but wonder if fast 1TB drives across the board would be a better bet because storage needs can get out of hand with video projects.