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Ideas for config Mac Pro Hard drives

J

Jigga Beef

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 11, 2009
255
23
Philadelphia, Pa
Been saving for over a year and just bought a new Mac pro. The day after MacWorld with no upgrade announced ☹.

My configuration is the 2x 2.8Gh quad-core processors, 2 GB of RAM, ATI Graphic card (standard), and a 1TB hard drive in the first hard drive bay.

I am upgrading for the original 1 processor G5 (sounds so slow now). I am planning on taking my 1TB hard drive from that machine which contains my entire iTunes library, and its full! Mostly of legally ripped DVDs and TV shows.

I am planning on configuring my hard drives like so.

Drive Bay 1: 1TB drive, I am considering partition it so there are about 400 gigs on a boot drive for applications and libraries and using the other 400 or so gigs left over as a drop box for things from my over full iTunes hard drive. (TV shows which have ended, so the tags won’t be changed)

Drive Bay 2: 1TB, or 500 gigs depending on the price I get for a hard drive. If it’s a 1TB I will just have it mirror the drive in bay 1. If its 500 gigs, I will have the iTunes “drop box” mirrored in drive 2 and use my time capsule to back up the OS, applications and libraries.

Drive 3 will be my currently full TB hard drive from my current machine and drive 4 will be a TB drive as an exact mirror for back up purposes.

Can I set up these mirrors I want with time machine? Also I have never partitioned a drive, I know you can do it in disk utility, is it a pretty self-explanatory process?

Is this set up of drives a good idea? A RAID seems too costly and just too much since I am not worried about response times of the drives, as long as my media plays properly I am generally happy. I do some work in PS and FCE but not enough to warrant percent scratch disks and RAIDed drives. I also read about a back up program called SuperDuper but it seems like time machine can do anything I would need super duper to do so is it worth the 30 bucks.

Also I have never used migration assistant, is that fairly painless or am I better off just syncing what I can with Mobile Me, and brining the rest of the things I need over VIA external hard drive? (Documents and pictures and such)

I haven’t gotten a new Mac in 5 years so are there any other tips you recommend when setting up my OS? I read somewhere to create an Admin profile that you never use for log in, and than your own profile? Just simple things like that. I have been browsing my old Macworld magazines looking for small tips!

Well thank you for reading my long post! I am super excited about this Mac to ship in 2-4 days I even shelled out for next day shipping so I didn’t have to want any longer than I needed to.
Thanks in advance.
 
Why don't you just create RAID arrays in Disk Utility? If you're working with multiple backup drives, RAID 1 is the ultimate configuration. You get full redundancy and your reads are roughly twice as fast.

And yes, it's very, very easy. Hardware RAID isn't going to happen, but you can certainly set up software RAID easily enough.
 
I always though RAIDs were just a way of using each drive as together as one. Wil a raid one be optimal for me having an exact copy of Drive 1 on the drive in drive 2 and drive 3 into drive 4. Or would SuperDuper or Carbon Clone Copy be better for that.
 
Yes, one array will appear as one drive, so if you created a RAID 5 array across drives 2, 3, and 4, they would all appear as one.

I've never dealt with RAID on OS X, but I kind of doubt it can boot to a software RAID array. Of course, I'd be delighted to be contradicted there. However, running drives 3 and 4 in RAID 1 will not only give you a backup drive but will also improve your read/write times. You could also consider the RAID 5 array. You can find details (and math) over here. The only serious levels, and the only ones supported by OS X, are 0, 1, and 5. Forget about 0.

Bear in mind that maintaining a backup inside your box is not enough. If your files are important, use an external drive or better yet maintain an off-site backup.
 
Do i need a RAID card for that kind of back up?

I also have a time capsule so i was planing on backing up my important files, photosm contacts and some system settings, things that won't change much. My iTunes library is ever growing and i kept filling up my time capsule.

The computer comes tomorrow. I am going to set up the OS and migrate some of things to from my old G5 to the new mac pro before i put in any hard drives or new RAM.

So i am thinking my first step after that will be is to move my 1TB iTunes drives into bay 3. Than insert my other 1 1TB drives into bay's 2 and 4. So i should set up a RAID 1 to the drive 1 is cloned into drive 2. and the drive 3 is cloned into drive 4. That can all be done in disk utility.

I haven't had a new mac since 2003, so i feel like such a newbie.

Also instead of making a new post. I am thinking of adding 2GB of RAM (2X1GB strips) What should I be spending for that? Saw few strips on Microcenter's website for about $65 dollars. Is that abut right.
 
I had to read that 4 times to make sure I got it right!

You have Four - 1TB drives

Raid 1 Drives 1-2 to mirror each other

Raid 1 Drives 3-4 to mirror each other

Backup Mirror 1-2 to your TC cause it's the OS set, 3-4 are covered

Just buy quality ram with ECC
 
Jigga Beef said:
Do i need a RAID card for that kind of back up?
Click to expand...

Nope, software RAID will do fine.

Jigga Beef said:
So i am thinking my first step after that will be is to move my 1TB iTunes drives into bay 3. Than insert my other 1 1TB drives into bay's 2 and 4. So i should set up a RAID 1 to the drive 1 is cloned into drive 2. and the drive 3 is cloned into drive 4. That can all be done in disk utility.
Click to expand...

Sounds about right.

Jigga Beef said:
Also instead of making a new post. I am thinking of adding 2GB of RAM (2X1GB strips) What should I be spending for that? Saw few strips on Microcenter's website for about $65 dollars. Is that abut right.
Click to expand...

Mmm, you can probably get it for a bit less if you find a good deal.

So, can I have your old G5 in payment for the consultation? :D
 
Thanks you guys have been a HUGE help.

Its the first G5 with only one processor..sounds so slow now, but i remember when i got it it was soo coool!! Now with a failing super drive, i might try and sell it with no HDs and try and get some money towards a new display. However my current powerbook's in worse shape, the superdrive failed so i can't upgrade to leopord, and the firewire ports are unresponsive, and it will not let me boot from the USB drive so booting from an external drive is out of the question.

Either way thanks for your help! if you have any other power mac tips i'm all ears!
 
I used to have one of those. They were nice machines! Not too zippy these days for sure, but hey, if you're offering, I still wouldn't say no. :p

Fine, fine, enjoy your new machine, and give us a holler if you have any trouble. :)
 
more newbie questions.

I got all my hard drives installed and formatted. I opted for a 1 TB in HD's 1 and 2. and a 1.5 TB in 3 and 4!

After reading a bit more about RAID, i've read that if one drives fails the other one in the RAID set will fail as well. I am looking to just have an "extra copy" of my two hard drives. So when one of my drives fails i can just swap it out with a new one and drag the files from the drive that didn't fail. I hope that makes sense.

But if RAID will do this what exactaly should i do in Disk Utility? Do i go to the RAID feature and drag the drive i want to be cloned, than how do i select where i want it to be cloned?
 
Jigga Beef said:
After reading a bit more about RAID, i've read that if one drives fails the other one in the RAID set will fail as well.
Click to expand...

That's RAID 0. What we're talking about is RAID 1, which is specifically designed for redundancy. If one drive in the array fails, you can replace it and the data will automatically be rebuilt from the other. That's what it's designed for. Well, that and improved performance, which it does very well also.
 
Great! Are there directions for a step-by-step to set up a RAID 1. I have 900 gigs of data on my current drive and don't want to lose that date but making some kind of mistake.

Thanks for the quick replies!
 
I'm glad I could help with the conceptual stuff, but I've never worked with RAID on OS X. Never had enough drives to do so, as a matter of fact. I did some Googling around a while back and came up with a bunch of tutorials, so maybe they might be able to help you out. Take a look, see what you can see.
 
I've found the correct way to do a RAID with OS X software but it's telling me all the data on the drive will be dystoyed if i continue. Now with the drive that just has my iTunes Media that's fine currently all of that is stored on a dif drive for now but when i set up the raid for my boot drive with my OS X installed and a bunch of Apps i just installed is there a way of getting around erasing it? Or will i have to reinstall everything?
 
Jigga Beef said:
I've found the correct way to do a RAID with OS X software but it's telling me all the data on the drive will be dystoyed if i continue. Now with the drive that just has my iTunes Media that's fine currently all of that is stored on a dif drive for now but when i set up the raid for my boot drive with my OS X installed and a bunch of Apps i just installed is there a way of getting around erasing it? Or will i have to reinstall everything?
Click to expand...

You will need to backup or Clone the drive. Then copy it over to your new Raid Set. Once it's copied your set.
 
Actually, from my research, that's not the case. You should simply be able to choose to rebuild the array and the blank drive will be updated to mirror the other.
 
Blue revolution do you have any details on how to do that and if its possible to do it in OS X Disk Utility?

If not what i will end up doing is dragging the applications i have recently installed
Microsoft Office
Handbreak
Drive Genius

to my iTunes Hard drive than after i create my RAID from my boot drive i will just drag them back after i reinstall my OS
 
The set has to be created first then you setup the OS. Samething if you break the set.

The mirror is built and seen as one drive. If a drive fails it will rebuild it's self. It strips every other byte to keep a backup, If I remember right on a RAID 1.
 
So i should move the data and let the RAID 1 set up first?

Will it be okay if i move some of my Applications like microsoft office to a 2nd drive by just dragging the Application icon or will some applications require me to move files from Library
 
Jigga Beef said:
So i should move the data and let the RAID 1 set up first?

Will it be okay if i move some of my Applications like microsoft office to a 2nd drive by just dragging the Application icon or will some applications require me to move files from Library
Click to expand...


You will need some kind of file transfer or clone it. Then just copy it back over to your new RAID drives.

If your Ext Drive is big enough use it to make the Backup. Install your OS and restore from your Image.
 
I've decided instead of running a RAID 1 on my OS X hard drive i will just use CCC to to back up's from the drive in bay 1 to the drive in bay 2. I will also back up to my time capsule. Should this be a decent back up? That way I have a clone of my drive incase the one in bay 1 fails while i am still backing up my system and important files to my TC.
 
Yeah, that would be a fine backup. I'm not sure why you'd rather use CCC than RAID, though. RAID does the same thing, but it updates constantly as data changes and speeds up your computer to boot.

It's still a good idea to maintain a Time Machine backup, for sure.
 
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