hard drive setup for my mac pro

[mc77]

Hello All,

To begin with, I know that this question has been asked many times before and I have searched some previous threads on it, but this will be my first time buying hard drives and I guess I'm just looking for a bit of feedback before I make the purchases. Currently my mac pro just has the 1tb drive that I ordered with it initially. Due to my growing itunes library and just the general need to back up files, I want to use the other hard drive bays in the mac pro. Here is what I am thinking of ordering from OWC: Buy 2 x 1tb western digital caviar green power drives and RAID them for the itunes library - not sure if it is RAID 0 or 1 for this? and then get a 2tb western digital green power drive for backup of of the itunes library and of course my work on the initial 1tb drive. Does this sound like a reasonable setup or should I be thinking of something else? Should I also be thinking of an external backup as well? Any input would be much appreciated especially on the RAID situation as I have never done this before - cheers

 

[Tesselator]

Hello All,

To begin with, I know that this question has been asked many times before and I have searched some previous threads on it, but this will be my first time buying hard drives and I guess I'm just looking for a bit of feedback before I make the purchases. Currently my mac pro just has the 1tb drive that I ordered with it initially. Due to my growing itunes library and just the general need to back up files, I want to use the other hard drive bays in the mac pro. Here is what I am thinking of ordering from OWC: Buy 2 x 1tb western digital caviar green power drives and RAID them for the itunes library - not sure if it is RAID 0 or 1 for this? and then get a 2tb western digital green power drive for backup of of the itunes library and of course my work on the initial 1tb drive. Does this sound like a reasonable setup or should I be thinking of something else? Should I also be thinking of an external backup as well? Any input would be much appreciated especially on the RAID situation as I have never done this before - cheers

oO

How big is your iTunes library?


Anyway, it would be more advantageous to make a RAID0 out of all three of the 1TB drives and then use the 2TB for backup as you were thinking.

The procedure for doing this would be to clone your current 1TB boot drive to the 2TB drive and make sure it works.
Then create the RAID0 out of the two new drives and the 1TB you currently have. (pretty easy to do!)
Then clone the 2TB boot you just made onto the 3-Drive RAID0 and make sure it works.
Then leave the 2TB clones as it is and set up your back-up program to update it on a scheduled basis.

This will provide the most performance, add pep to your system, solve your storage problems, and provide you with a backup solution all at the same time.

 

[mc77]

Thanks very much for your suggestions - I will look into following your advice. Cheers

 

[Cynicalone]

Tesselator's plan is a good one.

I know all about needing space for iTunes I have 4 1TB Greens just for iTunes.

 

[mc77]

Thanks for your reply cynicalone - was just wondering if you also have some sort of external backup and if so what you use?

 

[nanofrog]

oO

How big is your iTunes library?


Anyway, it would be more advantageous to make a RAID0 out of all three of the 1TB drives and then use the 2TB for backup as you were thinking.

The procedure for doing this would be to clone your current 1TB boot drive to the 2TB drive and make sure it works.
Then create the RAID0 out of the two new drives and the 1TB you currently have. (pretty easy to do!)
Then clone the 2TB boot you just made onto the 3-Drive RAID0 and make sure it works.
Then leave the 2TB clones as it is and set up your back-up program to update it on a scheduled basis.

This will provide the most performance, add pep to your system, solve your storage problems, and provide you with a backup solution all at the same time.

There might be a small achilles heel though. What's the 1TB disk in the machine now (Green, Black,??? ie 7200rpm or slower)?

It might mean moving to a different model would improve throughputs (better drive matching spec wise) a bit.

 

[Cynicalone]

Thanks for your reply cynicalone - was just wondering if you also have some sort of external backup and if so what you use?

My internal drives are...
Bay 1 & 2 RAID 1 for the OS, Apps, and work projects
Bay 3 for non critical work files
Bay 4 for old projects

The RAID 1 array is backed up to a Time Capsule hourly. Then each week I copy all 4 HDD's over to 4 external drives. Yes I'm a bit paranoid about my data.

My iTunes library is backed up nightly with Carbon Clone Copy to a string of WD external drives. I like Carbon Clone Copy since it only copies what has changed and makes sure the backup is a duplicate of the source, and it is free which is always a plus.

 

[dimme]

There might be a small achilles heel though. What's the 1TB disk in the machine now (Green, Black,??? ie 7200rpm or slower)?

It might mean moving to a different model would improve throughputs (better drive matching spec wise) a bit.

Are the green drives much slower?

 

[nanofrog]

Are the green drives much slower?

Yes they are, as lowering the power consumption does lower performance. Not terribly so, but it may matter for a primary drive or array.

Blacks are faster, as are the RE3's (developed simultaneously, and are of very similar performance).

Green (WD10EADS) = ~75MB/s
Black (WD101FALS) = ~91MB/s
RE3 (WD1002FBYS) = ~89MB/s

Please note these are all 1TB drives, and are the average reads from independent testing, not manufacturer claims or estimates.

 

[Tesselator]

There might be a small achilles heel though. What's the 1TB disk in the machine now (Green, Black,??? ie 7200rpm or slower)?

It might mean moving to a different model would improve throughputs (better drive matching spec wise) a bit.

Yeah, I thought of that but figured he would probably already know about that.

 

[mc77]

Thanks again for everyone's input/suggestions. I just have one other question: looking at Tesselator's suggestion, would I be better off just getting 3 more 1tb drives and RAID them with the one that I currently have and then come up with an external backup solution? Is this possible and more effective or no? Thanks again for all your help!

 

[Tesselator]

It's certainly possible. And the RAID is "guaranteed" to have a more predictable speed (either faster or slower). But I guess the smallest backup you can get away with is 1.5TB. The 2TB sounds juuuust right.

If you do this new way you could just do that till the BU no longer fits and then add it to the RAID0 for a 4-Drive RAID and get a 2TB BU drive - which by then will be cheaper too.