Mac Pro 2009 Software Raid worth using?

[nigel1210]

Currently have 1 x 640gb caviar black and was wondering if its worth getting a second drive and striping the two.

As I've never had a raid setup I was wondering Is it worth it, and what sort of things will I see a speed increase in?

I currently use the adobe suite, mainly Photoshop,illustrator and indesign but will also start using after effects. Will also be dabbling with logic pro, as well as the usual web browsing etc etc.

What are the pro's and cons, I know with raid 0 there is no redunancy so twice the risk data can be lost.

Feedback appreciated

 

[Loa]

Hello,

You're not getting many replies because there are a lot of RAID threads on this forum.

As far as performance goes, you can expect a near n-fold increase in raw data transfer speeds by using a RAID with n drives.

But be aware that you won't notice much of a difference with Photoshop. At least until CS5 comes out and allows for multi-core support. Right now PS4's bottleneck is the CPU, even when saving / opening files. I went from a single drive to a 4 disk RAID0, and noticed only a 5-10% speed gain when opening or closing big files (hundreds of megs).

In video you might get a higher performance gain, but I'm no expert.

Do a search in here, and you'll find lots of info on the subject.

Loa