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MacAtaq

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 17, 2008
12
0
I recently purchased a 500gb Seagate SataII HD for my MacPro.
I'm trying to figure out how to set it up for striped RAID, do I need a RAID card?
 
No, you can use software RAID - but you need 2 identical capacity hard drives, and you should not RAID your boot drive.

However; my opinion is that striped RAIDs (RAID 0 unless you are prepared to invest in 3 or more new hard drives and go RAID 5) are terribly risky (if you have a problem with one drive, you lose all data on both drives in the striped pair) AND - the speed benefit for most single user computing applications is not there. In fact, with the CPU overhead it might run slower.

There are selected applications for RAID striping where it makes sense -- multiuser servers, and capturing pro-level video. But most desktop applications benefit more from using the drives singly, and dividing the data storage tasks between separate drives. For example, Photoshop performs much better if you put the scratch disk, the data files, and the System/applications on three separate drives.
 
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