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B1: Samsung HD753LJ 750GB - MacOSX (apps)
B2: Samsung HD753LJ 750GB - Movies (1080p)
B3: Samsung HD753LJ 750GB - Music (Lossless)
B4: Samsung HD753LJ 750GB - Projects (Work)

LaCie D2 750GB for Time Machine backups.
 
Why would you need separate drives for docs music and video? Keep your OS on one and rest on another. Shouldn't matter what you use the remaining drives for.
 
Hayduke, I think you are throwing too much storage IN ONE PLACE at the issue. What if your Mac Pro were stolen, your data AND ALL BACKUP DRIVES would go with it. Honestly, just having one big backup drive to handle Time Machine for data and system would be fine, but you need external backup sources - off-site server, internet backup, anything... away from your Mac.

If it's worth THAT much, dude, that's what I would do. I'm a CIO and offsite storage is a key component of Disaster Recovery (theft, natural disaster, etc.). Look into it.

JP

You are completely correct. I just ordered one of these for offsite back-up:

Thecus N8800 (8TB)

I also just installed 2x Velociraptors in RAID 0 for the system disk, which will then Time Machine and Clone to internal drives. The remaining two bays will be for a data drive and a data clone drive. I wish Time Machine support multiple back-up destination drives without JBOD or RAIDing.

I think a RAID card will be added soon, possibly with 4x 2TB drives. I'm starting to rethink the Thecus order. Might try to catch them and hold the order until 2TB drives are available.
 
cloning/separate windows drive

As a newbie, how does one actually go about cloning the hard drive - what software is best or can it be done within apple os. Also when using boot camp I was under the impression that windows has to be on the first drive along with Mac os- can you actually separate mac and windows entirely by putting windows on drive 2, the mac os on 1?

Thanks
 
2 x VelociRaptors RAID0 partitioned (for convenience) as Macintosh HD 80GB and 480GB Home. Time Machine Home partition to stock 640GB drive.

I use Intego Personal Backup as it came as a bundle with VirusBarrier and NetBarrier to backup my system drive to an external FireWire 400 2.5" 80GB drive and everything else ends up on a FireWire 800 1TB drive.

There are several freebee backup apps out there too.
 
1 - 80GB Intel X25-M (boot)
2 - 640GB WD6400AAKS (docs)
3 - 1TB WD10EACS (media)
4 - (empty, will be WD 2TB)

5&6 - 2TB WD10EACS x2 in eSATA enclosure (Time Machine)
 
As a newbie, how does one actually go about cloning the hard drive - what software is best or can it be done within apple os.

You can use built-in command line utilities like ditto or rsync. There's also the donationware Carbon Copy Cloner, or the shareware SuperDuper!.

I use SuperDuper!, and used to use CCC. I changed for some reason that's eludes me now, but have been quite happy with SuperDuper!.
 
You can fit two HDDs in Optical Bay 2
I wanted to clarify with apple before buying the quad if I could set up a hardware raid 0 with a 5th drive and they (mac Pro Specialist) said that it may or may not work, that the optical drive connection into which you'd be now putting another Hard Drive wasn't designed for a hard drive (but that it still may work) and that it will more than likely void any warranty. :eek: So, I guess I'm stuck with 4x1TB in Raid 0 (with external back up) iso the 5TB that I wanted :( I don't have the knowledge or expertise to start doing my own additions and upgrades. oh well.
 
I wanted to clarify with apple before buying the quad if I could set up a hardware raid 0 with a 5th drive and they (mac Pro Specialist) said that it may or may not work, that the optical drive connection into which you'd be now putting another Hard Drive wasn't designed for a hard drive (but that it still may work) and that it will more than likely void any warranty. :eek: So, I guess I'm stuck with 4x1TB in Raid 0 (with external back up) iso the 5TB that I wanted :( I don't have the knowledge or expertise to start doing my own additions and upgrades. oh well.

That's a load of BS. If they're honestly going to attempt to void the entire warranty over someone using a SATA connector to connect a SATA hard disk… ugh
 
That's a load of BS. If they're honestly going to attempt to void the entire warranty over someone using a SATA connector to connect a SATA hard disk… ugh
the guy I spoke to was pretty short with me about it too. I had to go through 3 other reps before talking to him. By the time I basically insisted on speaking with a Mac Pro Specialist, he started off with: "So you want to go against what Apple recommends", to which I said, "No, I don't know what is recommended, that's why I'm calling". Any way. like I said, I don't have the expertise (time / patience) to argue the point with him or start fiddling around with the guts of what is at the end of the day, and expensive bit of kit. First time though I've felt a bit disappointed with apple support. I assumed that adding drives and things like that was what the Pro was all about, guess not.
 
For those of you that have moved the entire Home folder to a separate drive, I have 2 questions:

1. Is there any problem just "copying" the entire folder using the finder (and then resetting it in sys prefs), vs using terminal as shown here:

http://chris.pirillo.com/how-to-move-the-home-folder-in-os-x-and-why/

and here:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20071025220746340

I'm assuming the terminal method leaves less chance that something gets mucked up and starts giving you mysterious problems down the line. But I'm not very used to using terminal :(

2. What about diglloyd's method of separating data from apps, leaving Home on the system/app disk, but moving all data (music, photos etc) to a separate disk:

http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-SettingUpYourMac.html#SeparateData

I favor moving the entire Home folder, because even though diglloyd ends up moving his mail folder to the data disk, he'd still be leaving bookmarks and other user library items on the sys/app disk. I'd like to have all my "personal" data on the one disk, and the sys/apps disk just having my OS X install (which is basically backed up on my installation DVD) and other apps I can just re-download.

But I've seen people report that not having Home on the same disk as your OS will eventually bite you!
 
1. Is there any problem just "copying" the entire folder using the finder (and then resetting it in sys prefs), vs using terminal as shown here:

2. What about diglloyd's method of separating data from apps, leaving Home on the system/app disk, but moving all data (music, photos etc) to a separate disk:

I've done it both ways - method 2 on my G5 and now method 1 on my Mac Pro. I think method 1 works better as there are many apps that expect your stuff to be in your home folder.

I have an admin user with a home folder on the boot disk, in case my Users disk gets hosed, so I can login with the admin and change the path of my home folder to the clone.
 
1. 300Gb Velociraptor, (150Gb OSX + APPS), rest W7
2. 1Tb split 550/350 for photo library/documents
3. 1Tb Time Machine
4. 500Gb Video storage!
 
Thanks for the feedback NoNameBrand. I've gone with method 1, used SuperDuper to copy over just the user folder. Then I put in a user folder symlink on the system drive just as an extra precaution, as advised by this article at MacGurus:

http://www.macgurus.com/productpages/guides/MoveUsers.php

I'll have to remember to set up a separate admin account, always a good troubleshooting plan.
 
My new Mac Pro is coming next week and I also ordered 2x 1TB Caviar Black drives and I wanted input (since this seems the right place for it) for setting up RAID for Photoshop and Final Cut Express:

Drive 1: 640GB split 200GB OS/Apps and Rest itunes misc stuff.
Drive 2: 1TB RAID 0/1 - 120GB Partition scratch / Rest Data
Drive 3: 1TB RAID 0/2 - 120GB Partition scratch / Rest Data

Or would it just be better to buy a 4th drive JUST for Photoshop/FCE scratch?
 
I want to do this:

Drive 1: 1TB Mac OS X (Leopard 10.5.6)
Drive 2: 1TB Windows (Vista Ultimate 64-bit SP1)
Drive 3: 1TB Linux (Ubuntu 64-bit 9.04)
Drive 4: 1TB FreeBSD (7.1)
Drive 5: 1TB Solaris (2008.11)
 
Drive Setup

Drive 1: 300gb Raptor
Drive 2: 300gb Raptor
Drive 3: 1TB for HOME folder/ and Windows Partition
Drive 4: 1.5TB For Backup

Drive 1+2 are in RAID 0, and contain the OS + Applications
 
HD reorganization question

Might be a fairly stupid question, but it wouldn't be the first time... I'd rather ask than do something even more stupid. Thanks in advance for your patience!

Current setup (MacPro Quad)
Drive 1: 500 GB (Apps, almost 400 GB iPhoto library)
Drive 2: 500 GB (Docs, iTunes library)
Drive 3: 1 TB (Time Machine - nearly full)
Drive 4: empty

So I want to add a 1.5 to the mix, and thinking of a setup like this:
Drive 1: 1 TB (Apps, photos)
Drive 2: 500 GB (Docs, tunes)
Drive 3: 500 GB (woo hoo! extra space!)
Drive 4: 1.5 TB (Time Machine)

Onto the question:
1. If I pop the 1.5 into the empty bay, can I then proceed as follows:
- copy Time Machine HD to the new 1.5 TB, and
- copy the old (500 GB apps/photos) Drive 1 to the old 1 TB (TM) disk
or is there something I'm missing?

Thanks for your insight -
-c
 
Ive just rearranged mine:

from the old;

Bay 1 : 147GB Seagate Cheetah 15Krpm SAS
Bay 2 : 147GB Seagate Cheetah 15Krpm SAS
Bay 3 : 147GB Seagate Cheetah 15Krpm SAS
Bay 4 : 147GB Seagate Cheetah 15Krpm SAS
on H/W RAID5

Bay 5 (under Optical) : 320GB Seagate (Vista 64 native)


to the new:

Bay 1 : 147GB Seagate Cheetah 15Krpm SAS
Bay 2 : 147GB Seagate Cheetah 15Krpm SAS
on H/W RAID0 (Boot only with /Users on a mirror)

Bay 3 : 1.5TB Seagate (SD1B)
Bay 4 : 1.5TB Seagate (SD1B)
as H/W RAID1 (files,photos n stuff)

Bay 5 : 1.5TB Seagate (SD1B)
Bay 6 : 1.5TB Seagate (SD1B)
as S/W RAID1 (mostly TVShows and other big downloads)

This let me recycle the Solaris fileserver, and its now a dedicated Vista64 games box (and means my trusty mac is 100% Winslowz free yipppeeee).

Also have a couple of 1.5TB's left over so I shoved one in the LaCie external and one is going in the Time Capsule (When I can be bothered to unpack it as I move house in two weeks).
 
1) Stock 320 (to be replaced by SSD soon)
2) Samsung 750 (Raid 1)
3) Samsung 750 (Raid 1)

iTunes on 1TB Time Capsule
 
I have 2 questions:

- how does one put 6 hard drives into a MP 09 ?
there 4 bays with each a SATA connector, that I got... then there is 2 optical bay with each a SATA connector.
Now since most of the time optical bay 2 is empty, putting an HD in there using the available SATA connector makes sens... now how would one add another HDD in there (given that there is the physical space of doing so) where would it plug into ?? Are there some unused sata connectors on the main board ??

- I am really interested by the idea of separating the Home folder from the system/app drive... because I like simplicity, I like have itunes and iphoto do there thing and copy a bunch of thing in there... therefore I need a lot of space in my home drive...
Now where I have a problem is that I want to use an SSD 120g for my system/app drive. And obviously that ain't going to be enough space for my data.... hence separating the HOME to another bigger hard drive...

But now I am wandering if I am going to loose almost the advantages of using SSD... because all the browser cache and the whole bunch of little files are stored on the user home folder ? isn't?

What do you think about that ? Should I do a more complex move of the photo and music data and downloads folder etc. to a sperate drive and leave the whole of the HOME on the SSD ?

Alex
 
As of tomorrow (when the MP in my sig arrives), I'l have the 640GB stock in bay one for OS X, with a 1TB Samsung Spinpoint in bay two for time machine.
 
I have 2 questions:

- how does one put 6 hard drives into a MP 09 ?
there 4 bays with each a SATA connector, that I got... then there is 2 optical bay with each a SATA connector.
Now since most of the time optical bay 2 is empty, putting an HD in there using the available SATA connector makes sens... now how would one add another HDD in there (given that there is the physical space of doing so) where would it plug into ?? Are there some unused sata connectors on the main board ??

- I am really interested by the idea of separating the Home folder from the system/app drive... because I like simplicity, I like have itunes and iphoto do there thing and copy a bunch of thing in there... therefore I need a lot of space in my home drive...
Now where I have a problem is that I want to use an SSD 120g for my system/app drive. And obviously that ain't going to be enough space for my data.... hence separating the HOME to another bigger hard drive...

But now I am wandering if I am going to loose almost the advantages of using SSD... because all the browser cache and the whole bunch of little files are stored on the user home folder ? isn't?

What do you think about that ? Should I do a more complex move of the photo and music data and downloads folder etc. to a sperate drive and leave the whole of the HOME on the SSD ?

Alex

You'd probably have to move the optical drive to external if you want a 6th drive in place of the optical drive. As far as I know there are only two extra SATA cables on the MB.
 
Well I set my wifes computer up with stock 640 as OS drive.

1 X 250mb drive partition into 4 for swap.
Another 250mb drive which was old computer main drive (in case I missed copying any files, they are still there),
and 1tb Time Machine drive.

500 mb external drive for backup purposes as well.

Once 250mb old main drive is clear to be removed, adding in another 1tb for working folder.

She uses it for her photography work. PS CS4, Canon Utilities, Bridge etc.
 
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