Hard Drive Setup with new MP, what would you do?

[bzollinger]

So my new 2010 MP should be here by friday and I need to figure out how to setup all my HDDs. I'm halfway there.

Bay1: 500GB seagate momentus XT hybrid (boot drive)
Bay2: 2TB Hitachi (storage for photos, music, movies, etc.)
Bay3: 1TB WD Black
Bay4: 1TB WD Black

External: 500GB WD REY2 (timemachine backups)

What would you do with the two 1TB drives and why?

 

[dockingbay94]

I'd RAID the WD's in a RAID 0 and movie all the music, photos, movies to them. Then I'd use the 2TB Hitachi as a Time Machine Backup for the RAID and Boot Drive.

Of course I don't know what you are using the Mac Pro for, but off of the information you provided I'd do that.

 

[bzollinger]

Sorry for the similar post..

I just saw and read this thread here about a similar situation

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/999584/

There are some good ideas here, but any other would be appreciated too.

 

[nanofrog]

What are you using the system for?

 

[bzollinger]

I'd RAID the WD's in a RAID 0 and movie all the music, photos, movies to them. Then I'd use the 2TB Hitachi as a Time Machine Backup for the RAID and Boot Drive.

Of course I don't know what you are using the Mac Pro for, but off of the information you provided I'd do that.

Thanks for the advice!

The only intensive stuff I do is CS5, LR3, and some iMovie along with iDVD slideshows. Everything else is iPhoto, iTunes, Mail, Safari.....

 

[bzollinger]

What are you using the system for?

Sorry I should have included this in the original post. I'm using it for PS5 & LR3 mostly also using PhotoMatix Pro, iPhoto, iTunes, iDVD, iMovie and other casual apps.

thanks,
BZ

 

[VirtualRain]

Why do you need them at all?

However, it raises questions about your other drive choices...

Why not an SSD for a boot drive? I suspect you don't need 500GB for your boot drive. In fact, a 40-60GB drive would be plenty for OS/Apps and you would get much better performance.

Why not use 2x1TB drives in RAID0 for added performance for your media?

I'm assuming the other drives must be hand-me-downs from a previous system? If so, then I would consider selling them and going with an SSD and a pair of 1TB drives in RAID0.

 

[nanofrog]

Sorry I should have included this in the original post. I'm using it for PS5 & LR3 mostly also using PhotoMatix Pro, iPhoto, iTunes, iDVD, iMovie and other casual apps.

thanks,
BZ

Professionally, or as an enthusiast/hobbyist?

Sorry for all of the questions, but it gives an idea of how critical your data and time are, as well as some indication of budgets (if too low for a professional, you can get an idea where you need to be, and what it will cost).

Why not an SSD for a boot drive? I suspect you don't need 500GB for your boot drive. In fact, a 40-60GB drive would be plenty for OS/Apps and you would get much better performance.

Why not use 2x1TB drives in RAID0 for added performance for your media?

I'm assuming the other drives must be hand-me-downs from a previous system? If so, then I would consider selling them and going with an SSD and a pair of 1TB drives in RAID0.

Quite possibly a good choice (assuming the system's not used to produce critical data), and a good backup system is in place.

 

[bzollinger]

Professionally, or as an enthusiast/hobbyist?

Sorry for all of the questions, but it gives an idea of how critical your data and time are, as well as some indication of budgets (if too low for a professional, you can get an idea where you need to be, and what it will cost).


Quite possibly a good choice (assuming the system's not used to produce critical data), and a good backup system is in place.

All of your questions are valid and relevant!

My work on the MP is hobbist/enthusiast (I have a day job...), but I work in IT so I'm all about the data integrity and backups! I have a crude offsite backup routine (sync backups and take offsite 2x/year).

My budget is pure hobbyist. I'm interested to know what you guys think my options are for these disks.

thanks,
BZ

 

[bzollinger]

Why do you need them at all?

However, it raises questions about your other drive choices...

Why not an SSD for a boot drive? I suspect you don't need 500GB for your boot drive. In fact, a 40-60GB drive would be plenty for OS/Apps and you would get much better performance.

Why not use 2x1TB drives in RAID0 for added performance for your media?

I'm assuming the other drives must be hand-me-downs from a previous system? If so, then I would consider selling them and going with an SSD and a pair of 1TB drives in RAID0.

I guess I need them all because I own them and I've got the capacity to employ them, thanks to the MP.

I chose the momentus XT because I couldn't afford a good QWC SSD at the time and it was a good fit for the Mac mini that was serving as a stop gap until the MP was available.

The 2TB was bought to cover the bases on the mini knowing that it would be useful when the MP was bought.

One 1TB was mandatory with the new MP, and the other I has bought a year or so ago when I was working w/ my old G5. The 500GB was the first upgrade to the G5 years ago, and is fast and reliable......

Does that answer you questions about the drives that I'm going to put in the MP?

 

[nanofrog]

All of your questions are valid and relevant!

My work on the MP is hobbist/enthusiast (I have a day job...), but I work in IT so I'm all about the data integrity and backups! I have a crude offsite backup routine (sync backups and take offsite 2x/year).

My budget is pure hobbyist. I'm interested to know what you guys think my options are for these disks.

thanks,
BZ

As an inexpensive, but bare minumum solution, you could go with this (trying to use what you have on hand):

• Empty Optical Bay: SSD if possible, or the 500GB Momentus if not
• Bay1 - 2: 1TB Caviar Black in a RAID 0 (scratch space)
• Bay3: 2TB Hitachi (Primary DATA)
• Bay4: Leave empty for a future disk

With a sufficent backup system, you could put your Primary DATA on a RAID 0 as well, but you'd need another disk (or different pair), and locate them in bays 3 and 4. Backups to be made to external disk/s (just avoid RAID 0, or any software implementation of RAID 5 for a backup solution).

This is meant to be low cost, so the compromise is the time necessary to recover if the your Primary DATA is on a stripe set (fix the array, restore the data, and re-perform work for any missing data; work done between the most recent backup and the time the array failed).

BTW, making a backup of scratch data is a waste of time and disk space.

 

[VirtualRain]

Does that answer you questions about the drives that I'm going to put in the MP?

I understand, but just because you have them, doesn't force you to keep using them.

Perhaps the best use of the drives you have is to...

- Sell the XT and 500GB external and get a small SSD for boot.
- Run all your media etc off the pair of 1TB's in RAID0
- Use the 2TB as an internal time machine backup

 

[Hamburg]

Which Raid Card do you use? The one preinstalled by Aplle?

 

[Fiete5401]

Which Raid Card do you use? The one preinstalled by Aplle?

You don't necessarily have to use a raid card. You can create a software raid with Disk Util. There are throughput limitations by a software raid but a hobbyist won't notice, I guess.

 

[milo]

I wouldn't do a raid 0 for drives like that. You don't really need the speed and if one fails it's much more of a pain than just replacing a single drive.

And personally I wouldn't buy two 1T drives when 1.5 and 2 are available, you're filling up all your bays right off the bat.

 

[bzollinger]

I understand, but just because you have them, doesn't force you to keep using them.

Perhaps the best use of the drives you have is to...

- Sell the XT and 500GB external and get a small SSD for boot.
- Run all your media etc off the pair of 1TB's in RAID0
- Use the 2TB as an internal time machine backup

Point taken. I could maybe sell the XT for $100 and the 500GB external for $50, scrape up another $170 to get a 120GB OWC SSD ($320). I could get away with a smaller SSD, but IMO it might be a pain to make sure that ONLY system and apps stay on that drive, so 120GB is a safer longer term move.

If it wasn't so much shuffling around this could be the best config. I'm going to have to keep this in mind as I move forward. Thanks for the input!
BZ

 

[alphaod]

I'd string together 4x 2TB drives in RAID 5 with a proper RAID card and call it day. If you already have the 1TB drives, you could buy 2 more than set up a RAID with 1TB drives. It's hard to say what you should set up if we don't know your budget (saying hobbyist is a bit vague… I could call myself that).

For example, I have 4x 300GB VR drives in RAID 5 for my main boot volume giving me 900GB of usable space. I have a Drobo S set up via eSATA giving me about 7TB of usable space with 5x 2TB disks. Also have another 2x 1.5TB external eSATA RAID 1 set up for Time Machine backing up my internal drives. For this I needed to get both a proper SAS RAID card with a backup battery and a good eSATA card that supported port multiplication.