FW800 Soft RAID 0

Discussion in 'Mac Pro' started by DeeEss, Oct 25, 2011.

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  1. DeeEss, Oct 25, 2011

    DeeEss macrumors 6502a

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    Jan 17, 2011
    #1
    Hi,

    Would there be any write speed increase from creating a Software raid0 array from 2x FW800 external drives that have been daisy chained together from one FW800 port?

    Just trying to create as much speed as possible with what I have.

    Thanks in advance,
     
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  2. flatfoot, Oct 25, 2011

    flatfoot macrumors 65816

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    #2
    That depends on what the throughputs of the single drives are.

    FW800 will give you ~80MB/s at best. Since recent drives top that, putting them in RAID0 via FW800 won't give you any speed increase.
     
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  3. Consultant, Oct 25, 2011

    Consultant macrumors G5

    Consultant

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    #3
    What do you want to use speed for?

    Development? Photoshop cache? Video?
     
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  4. Eddyisgreat, Oct 25, 2011

    Eddyisgreat macrumors 601

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    #4
    If your disk is 1 TB or large and particularly one of the faster WD Blacks or Samsung disks then you more than likely max out the FW800 bus with a single drive. I have a G-Raid Mini that has 2x 250 gig 2.5 disks in striped raid and through FW800 it's limited to around 70 MBps; through eSATA it's around 120 MBps.
     
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  5. DeeEss, Oct 25, 2011

    DeeEss thread starter macrumors 6502a

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    Jan 17, 2011
    #5
    Thanks everyone. Confirming what I thought.

    I need a backup boot drive that will be fast enough to operate and keep up with a decent workload if need be for my Mac Pro and Macbook Pro.

    I have a G-Tech Mini which I would just use and the write times are fine but for some reason my Mac Pro will boot from it but not my Macbook Pro. No matter what I try and I've exhausted all avenues on it.

    So my next thought was to daisy chain 2 FW800 bus drives and create as much speed as I can from it but then I realised, of corse I only have 1 FW800 port on the MBP anyway.
     
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  6. nanofrog, Oct 25, 2011

    nanofrog macrumors G4

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    #6
    FW800 is good for ~100MB/s, which can be exceeded by some more recent disks (real world, not manufacturer's performance figures).

    So running a stripe set off of a single FW800 port won't really do much for you (pair of Greens would run faster than a single Green, but not by a huge amount). Either way, if you need more speed, you'll want to attach the disks to SATA ports, then create a RAID.

    BTW, make sure you have a good backup solution (needed with any drive configuration, but especially important with stripe sets since a single disk failure in the set = all data is gone).
     
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