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Help with Simple HD and Backup Solution

T

threeloaves

macrumors newbie
Original poster
My primary use for this machine will be photoshop/illustrator, and home use. The hard drive configuration is what im not sure of:

WD 640 - OS & Apps
Not sure? - Data (Important files, projects, etc.)
WD 1TB - Time Machine
WD 640 - SuperDuper Backup

I also have a 500gb buffalo nas i use for itunes/movies/media.
 
I'm not exactly sure what your question is since everything looks fine in your post already.

I don't know what your exact storage needs are for an OS drive and data.

But have you considered.
1. 10000 RPM 150GB for Boot and Apps
2 and 3. dual 500GB HD's in RAID 0 for data
4. 1 TB Time Machine backup, partitioned to say 850GB backup 150GB for Superduper. All of this really depends on your budget.

If you can spend more
1. 10000 RPM 300GB for boot and apps
2-4. RAID 0 with 3 750 GB HD's
5-6. 1TB Hard Drives connected by Firewire for Time Machine and Super Duper

Mainly if your concerns are for speed and data backup
then one drive for booting faster is better
for data read/write speed a RAID 0
for data mirroring RAID 1
for speed and mirroring RAID 0+1 (requires external firewire 800 for read/write speed in Mac Pro with a dedicated boot drive)
with mirroring you can skip timemachine since you have a duplicate drive anyways.

The main advantage of mirroring is that you have an exact duplicate always. However unlike a backup if you accidentally delete a file it is still gone. So I would recommend one of the options above to have both a backup and quick data access. An advantage of the external backup drive is that at night you can lock it up in a fireproof safe or keep it off location by having several externals.
 
velocityg4 said:
I'm not exactly sure what your question is since everything looks fine in your post already.

I don't know what your exact storage needs are for an OS drive and data.

But have you considered.
1. 10000 RPM 150GB for Boot and Apps
2 and 3. dual 500GB HD's in RAID 0 for data
4. 1 TB Time Machine backup, partitioned to say 850GB backup 150GB for Superduper. All of this really depends on your budget.

If you can spend more
1. 10000 RPM 300GB for boot and apps
2-4. RAID 0 with 3 750 GB HD's
5-6. 1TB Hard Drives connected by Firewire for Time Machine and Super Duper

Mainly if your concerns are for speed and data backup
then one drive for booting faster is better
for data read/write speed a RAID 0
for data mirroring RAID 1
for speed and mirroring RAID 0+1 (requires external firewire 800 for read/write speed in Mac Pro with a dedicated boot drive)
with mirroring you can skip timemachine since you have a duplicate drive anyways.

The main advantage of mirroring is that you have an exact duplicate always. However unlike a backup if you accidentally delete a file it is still gone. So I would recommend one of the options above to have both a backup and quick data access. An advantage of the external backup drive is that at night you can lock it up in a fireproof safe or keep it off location by having several externals.
Click to expand...

Crap I screwed up. I just ordered:

OWC Mercury Elite-AL 800+USB2 Pro RAID Ready for 2 Sata drives
2 WD 640gb
1 WD 1TB

Could I do this:
Bay 1: WD Raptor 150gb (OS & Apps)
Bay 2 & 3: 2 WD Caviar 640gb in RAID 0 (Data)
Bay 4: WD Caviar 1TB (Time Machine & SuperDuper)

So I would have to return that OWC enclosure,and pick up a 150gb raptor.
 
threeloaves said:
Crap I screwed up. I just ordered:

OWC Mercury Elite-AL 800+USB2 Pro RAID Ready for 2 Sata drives
2 WD 640gb
1 WD 1TB

Could I do this:
Bay 1: WD Raptor 150gb (OS & Apps)
Bay 2 & 3: 2 WD Caviar 640gb in RAID 0 (Data)
Bay 4: WD Caviar 1TB (Time Machine & SuperDuper)

So I would have to return that OWC enclosure,and pick up a 150gb raptor.
Click to expand...
You should be fine, this is essentially what I suggested in my post except you are using 640GB drives instead of 500GB's for RAID 0. Since you ordered 2x640 will that single 1TB be enough for backups?

Other thoughts: If you want you could keep the 1TB in an enclosure. Then at night or when you are out of the house you could keep your backup locked in a fire resistant safe and protect your backed up data even better. Redundancy and backups are useless if the computer and backup gets destroyed or stolen.

For even better protection you could go to Newegg and pickup a belkin surge suppressor with 3000+ joule rating for under $30.

I do use a surge suppressor but do not use a safe. However my files are backed up to a data computer, I would not say server since it uses basic file sharing. This computer looks like a POS so I hope thieves would be too tired from stealing my nice looking stuff to bother with it😀. Critical files are backed up to DVD though on a monthly basis and stored securely.
 
I do have one of those belkin supressors. Would it have been more efficient to pick up another WD 640, and run a RAID 5? I dunno im getting so confused by all this.
 
From what I have read the Mac Pro does not support RAID 5 without a RAID card. Which can be quite expensive. The only RAID card I know of the works with internal Hard Drives on the Mac Pro is from Apple. Other Manufacturers cards require external drives.

RAID 5 does provide decent protection, but your setup should be good enough as long as you backup to your 1TB drive regularly. Then the most you lose is your days work, work between backups. With how few drives you have you could do RAID 0+1 which would not require an additional card, but you would need two internal and two external via FW800 for RAID 0+1.

Honestly the plan you laid out sounds fine this is a lot of storage and will really cut down on latencies. Unless of course you are using 512MB of RAM😱
1. 150GB 10000 RPM
2/3. 640GB's RAID 0
4. 1TB: Time Machine/Superduper

Plus with a backup if you accidently delete a file you can recover it as opposed to RAID 5.

The other setup you could do though not quite as efficient would be.
1-4. 640GBs in RAID 0+1 for boot, data and apps
5. External 1TB for time machine

But I would go with the first option. It really depends on how important efficiency and real time data protection is for you and their are many different configurations. The biggest factor is how much are you willing to spend; then comes the importance of speed versus real time data security versus amount of storage.

Edit: You don't want to go too nuts.
 
velocityg4 said:
From what I have read the Mac Pro does not support RAID 5 without a RAID card. Which can be quite expensive. The only RAID card I know of the works with internal Hard Drives on the Mac Pro is from Apple. Other Manufacturers cards require external drives.

RAID 5 does provide decent protection, but your setup should be good enough as long as you backup to your 1TB drive regularly. Then the most you lose is your days work, work between backups. With how few drives you have you could do RAID 0+1 which would not require an additional card, but you would need two internal and two external via FW800 for RAID 0+1.

Honestly the plan you laid out sounds fine this is a lot of storage and will really cut down on latencies. Unless of course you are using 512MB of RAM😱
1. 150GB 10000 RPM
2/3. 640GB's RAID 0
4. 1TB: Time Machine/Superduper

Plus with a backup if you accidently delete a file you can recover it as opposed to RAID 5.

The other setup you could do though not quite as efficient would be.
1-4. 640GBs in RAID 0+1 for boot, data and apps
5. External 1TB for time machine

But I would go with the first option. It really depends on how important efficiency and real time data protection is for you and their are many different configurations. The biggest factor is how much are you willing to spend; then comes the importance of speed versus real time data security versus amount of storage.

Edit: You don't want to go too nuts.
Click to expand...

You have been a huge help - I really appreciate it.
 
I just had a thought. Maybe I should keep that external enclosure, and throw the 1tb in there. Just so its separate from the machine in the event something would happen to it. What do you think? If thats the case I should probably still return that enclosure, and get a less expensive one.
 
threeloaves said:
I just had a thought. Maybe I should keep that external enclosure, and throw the 1tb in there. Just so its separate from the machine in the event something would happen to it. What do you think? If thats the case I should probably still return that enclosure, and get a less expensive one.
Click to expand...
That is definitely preferable, then you can lock it up in a secure fire resistant safe when not backing up data. As for returning it that is your prerogative. Remember speed wise eSATA > FW800 > FW400 > USB though the drive may never max out FW800 nor eSATA but most any 1TB drive will max out FW400 and USB.

eSATA enclosures are cheaper than FW800 ones and sometimes cheaper than FW400 but you would have to route one of your SATA ports outside the case (thus losing an internal drive bay) or get an eSATA card. Looking at that FW800 may be the way to go.
 
I got an enclosure from owc - the mercury elite. Im going to keep that and throw the 1tb in there. Which I was going to partition for Time Machine, and SuperDuper. Im wondering if I should use the 1TB just for Time Machine, and have SuperDuper back up to either my NAS or the stock 320gb. Thoughts?

Also, what are your thoughts on moving the home directory to another drive - say one of the 640's? Is that asking for trouble being they are going to be in RAID 0?

And what if I did something like this:

Bay 1: WD Raptor 150gb (OS & Apps)

Bay 2 & 3: 2 WD Caviar 640gb in RAID 0
- Partition 1: 50GB Scratch
- Partition 2: Data(Photos, Projects,Crapola, etc.)

Bay 4: 320GB Stock
- Backup of OS & Apps (Weekly)
- Backup of Data (Weekly)

External: WD Caviar 1TB
Partition 1: Time Machine
Partition 2: SuperDuper Backup (Daily or Every other day)

Did I just make this too complicated?
 
threeloaves said:
I got an enclosure from owc - the mercury elite. Im going to keep that and throw the 1tb in there. Which I was going to partition for Time Machine, and SuperDuper. Im wondering if I should use the 1TB just for Time Machine, and have SuperDuper back up to either my NAS or the stock 320gb. Thoughts?

Also, what are your thoughts on moving the home directory to another drive - say one of the 640's? Is that asking for trouble being they are going to be in RAID 0?

And what if I did something like this:

Bay 1: WD Raptor 150gb (OS & Apps)

Bay 2 & 3: 2 WD Caviar 640gb in RAID 0
- Partition 1: 50GB Scratch
- Partition 2: Data(Photos, Projects,Crapola, etc.)

Bay 4: 320GB Stock
- Backup of OS & Apps (Weekly)
- Backup of Data (Weekly)

External: WD Caviar 1TB
Partition 1: Time Machine
Partition 2: SuperDuper Backup (Daily or Every other day)

Did I just make this too complicated?
Click to expand...

Well since you have the 320GB you might as well use it for the Super Duper of your Boot Drive. I am not sure if SuperDuper! would work on the NAS but then I just use the limited free version.

For the Home directory on the RAID 0 I do not see why it would be a problem I use RAID 0 for my boot drive and all info on the G5. As for your HD utilization why not use the 320GB for your scratch disk instead of the RAID. That way you are not paging out to your RAID array while reading/writing large amounts of data.

1 150GB: OS/Apps (150)

2/3 640's: RAID 0 for data

4 320GB: Partition 1: Scratch Disk (50 GB)
Partition 2: Superduper!/Backup whenever you feel appropriate (automated weekly)

External: 1TB Time Machine

I do not see the need to redundantly back up your OS and Apps on both the 1TB and 320GB hard drives. I do not know if you have need for Windows but you could also use the 320 for that. One caveat I think I forgot to mention with RAID 0 those drives can not be accessed from Windows.
 
Bay 1: 150gb Boot Drive (OS X & Apps)

Bay 2 & 3: 640's in RAID 0 (Home Directory & Data)

Bay 4: 320Gb Stock drive
- Partition 1: 50Gb Scratch
- Partition 2: SuperDuper Backup of Boot Drive (weekly)

External: 1TB (Time Machine Backup Daily)

So, I would be alright moving the home directory to the RAID 0 - correct?

I thought about partitioning one of the drives for windows. But, whats the point? I haven't used it in almost 5 years. I don't think I'll be needing that at all.

If I want to share files I can just throw it on the NAS. So that seems to be all good.

My only other question would be should I use that entire 1TB for Time Machine?
 
Things may have changed with Leopard. However, in older versions of OS X you can not just simply drag and drop the Home Folder to a different drive or partition but do some command line work like this.

As for using the full 1TB for time machine that is really up to you depending on how much storage you need for a full backup. I would imagine that would be your choice since you are getting two 640GB hard drives for data storage.
 
I'm wondering if I even need to RAID those 640's. 640GB is plenty of room for what I'll be storing - I think. So what would be the point I just have an empty 640 hangin out in bay 3 now though.

My other option I guess would be to do a RAID 1 on those 640s.
 
The only purpose of the RAID 0 is faster data access, and it makes a noticeable difference especially when working with large files. You could go RAID 1 but that does slightly impact performance over a standalone drive. Personally since you will have a backup drive I can not see a particularly compelling reason to avoid the performance gains of RAID 0.

As far as disk journaling is concerned you may want to read this. Basically disk journaling increases fault tolerance and recovery but impacts performance. Personally I use Journaling, but have no strong feelings one way or the other file access is fast enough and the added protection seemed advantageous.

As far as not using all the space I had that problem for a few years ago but technology has reached the point to explore new interests and I could probably fill a few terabytes given the chance. Mainly I am interested now in storing video like I do songs and I have over a hundred DVD's if I added my VHS tapes it would become monstrous. Heck my iTunes music library is over 30GB it used to be much larger but my iMacs hard drive crashed a day after I had formatted my Windows PC that was being used for backup. Thus many of the songs where lost and the orginal CD's had been stolen from my car, I only recovered part of the library that my former roomate had on his Mac.
 
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