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paco taco mike

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 5, 2005
50
0
San Francisco
i am a newbie to this, but i just wanted to know how i can set up my powermac with two hard drives to run as if there was only one. Is this possible? Thanks

-mike
 

CanadaRAM

macrumors G5
Yes, it is possible, you do it with a software setting

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=152065

However:
What is your reason for doing so?

By setting up RAID 0 (Striping) you are monumentally increasing your risk of data loss. Any failure on either of the drives will probably result in the loss of all data on both drives. Do not set up a RAID unless you also have set up a bulletproof data backup regimen (typical would be 2 x 120 Gb HD in a RAID 0, with an external 250 Gb drive as a backup)

Unless you
1) need to have files larger than any single drive, or
2) are capturing high bandwidth media files (such as video or massive audio), there may be little to no improvement in performance with a RAID.

In fact, some tests show that because of the computational overhead of calculating the RAID data placement, a RAID is slower than a single disk for normal everyday desktop usage -- where random access is far more important than maximum sustained throughput.

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com
 

paco taco mike

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 5, 2005
50
0
San Francisco
CanadaRAM said:
Yes, it is possible, you do it with a software setting

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=152065

However:
What is your reason for doing so?

By setting up RAID 0 (Striping) you are monumentally increasing your risk of data loss. Any failure on either of the drives will probably result in the loss of all data on both drives. Do not set up a RAID unless you also have set up a bulletproof data backup regimen (typical would be 2 x 120 Gb HD in a RAID 0, with an external 250 Gb drive as a backup)

Unless you
1) need to have files larger than any single drive, or
2) are capturing high bandwidth media files (such as video or massive audio), there may be little to no improvement in performance with a RAID.

In fact, some tests show that because of the computational overhead of calculating the RAID data placement, a RAID is slower than a single disk for normal everyday desktop usage -- where random access is far more important than maximum sustained throughput.

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com
thanks, didn't know about that. I just wanted to know if there was a way. i don't think i'll be setting it up, i don't want to risk losing my files.

thanks anyway!

-mike
 
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