How to set up two or more internal hard drives?

[radiohead1075]

I have an (Early 2008) Mac Pro in standard configuration. The hard drive is just about full and would like to add a second internal hard drive.

I have read that some people choose to keep just the OS on one hard drive and everything else on the drive. Is this the best way to go? Which hard drive would the applications go on (with the OS?)?

The main use of this machine is for graphics (Adobe CS3 and Aperture).

Any recommendation of brand and model of hard drive would be good for this application?

 

[goMac]

I have an (Early 2008) Mac Pro in standard configuration. The hard drive is just about full and would like to add a second internal hard drive.

I have read that some people choose to keep just the OS on one hard drive and everything else on the drive. Is this the best way to go? Which hard drive would the applications go on (with the OS?)?

The main use of this machine is for graphics (Adobe CS3 and Aperture).

Any recommendation of brand and model of hard drive would be good for this application?

Your best choice would probably be to keep your larger projects and your scratch file for CS suite on the second drive. You can also tell Aperture to keep it's files on the second drive, but I'm less familiar with this process (I keep telling myself I need to buy Aperture, but I don't have a camera that supports RAW...)

It's probably not worth it to keep a drive just for your OS. Your OS and your applications probably are not hammering the drive the most in your situation.

Also, do consider a 2nd or 3rd drive for backups. I wouldn't risk my files.

 

[kevink2]

There is a process you can go through to move your home directory to a secondary drive. I never bothered with it, though I probably should have.

My current setup is, the primary drive has my home directory, the OS, and my boot camp partition. My second, larger drive, is just mounted as /Volume/disk2. I use is as an extension of my home directory, using it as an archive drive along with being a drive for VMWare disks. With my recent cleanup, I have plenty of space on both.

I have a third, larger, drive as my Time Capsule drive. THAT drive is now full due to the reorganizations I've been doing.