Mac Pro 2013 and video editing - Which OS X are you using?

[loby]

I am upgrading to a mac pro 2013 and was wondering those who are doing video editing and processing, what OS X version are you using?

Are you using OS X Mavericks, OS X Yosemite or OS X El Capitan?

My guess would be OS X Yosemite and not El Capitan, but would be interesting to see what handles better for the 2013 model, so when my mac pro comes in the mail soon...I load the better OS for the 'can'.

Thanks ahead of time for those who help with this decision.

 

[LethalWolfe]

I don't think you can roll back the OS to something older than what the Mac shipped with, and unless you absolutely need it now I wouldn't buy a 2013. It's relatively old, expensive and most likely (fingers crossed) this fall we'll get a new model that's significantly better than the current offering.

 

[loby]

I don't think you can roll back the OS to something older than what the Mac shipped with, and unless you absolutely need it now I wouldn't buy a 2013. It's relatively old, expensive and most likely (fingers crossed) this fall we'll get a new model that's significantly better than the current offering.

I think whatever was the first OS X that came with the mac's debut and then going forward is allowed to be loaded. When the Mac Pro 2013 first came out, I believe it was during OS X Mavericks, so the system can have either Mavericks, Yosemite or El Capitan currently.

I am trying to find out what OS X is the smoothest for the mac pro 2013 currently. For instance, running OS X Yosemite on my maxed out mac mini 2012 with Final Cut Pro X, Yosemite seems to be the better choice.

So for the mac pro 2013, I am not sure and hope those that have one who are doing video editing might suggest.

 

[4God]

I'm on a 2013 6 core with 32GB of RAM. Other users' experiences may differ but for me, El Capitan has made FCPX a little snappier. Yosemite did seem a little more stable at first but updates to El Capitan seems to have fixed that. Also as a side note, I like using my Magic Trackpad 2 and it only (fully) works with El Capitan.

 

[loby]

I'm on a 2013 6 core with 32GB of RAM. Other users' experiences may differ but for me, El Capitan has made FCPX a little snappier. Yosemite did seem a little more stable at first but updates to El Capitan seems to have fixed that. Also as a side note, I like using my Magic Trackpad 2 and it only (fully) works with El Capitan.

Good to know about the trackpad 2 while working with other OS X's. Seems it was made for El Cap and above.

I was hoping this was the case with El Cap and the Mac Pro using FCPX. El Cap is finally becoming stable and should work well with the Mac Pro. The only issue I have is with no RAID configurations unless you use terminal. macOS Serria seems to fix this, but it looks like the next OS is moving like Miscrosoft to a more data collection center and cloud focus. Not interest in this since my Mac Pro is for video editing and work.

 

[LethalWolfe]

You can use SoftRAID to create and monitor your RAIDs.

https://www.softraid.com/

 

[loby]

You can use SoftRAID to create and monitor your RAIDs.

https://www.softraid.com/

Looks good, will check it out. Thanks!

 

[kingtj]

Not only is this an option, but I'd also personally recommend sticking with hardware RAID, built into your external drive storage cabinet, if possible. That way, you don't create any additional burden on the machine to do the calculations in software -- and your external array will be portable to other Macs, should that ever be needed. No worry about configuring up software RAID to match what it was originally formatted with.

You could do this with a Drobo or a Pegasus, for example. I went with a lesser-known brand, similar to what's being sold here:

https://www.amazon.com/Thunderbolt-...977&sr=8-30&keywords=5+drive+RAID+thunderbolt

You can use SoftRAID to create and monitor your RAIDs.

https://www.softraid.com/

 

[ColdCase]

Not only is this an option, but I'd also personally recommend sticking with hardware RAID, built into your external drive storage cabinet, if possible. That way, you don't create any additional burden on the machine to do the calculations in software -- and your external array will be portable to other Macs, should that ever be needed. No worry about configuring up software RAID to match what it was originally formatted with.

You could do this with a Drobo or a Pegasus, for example. I went with a lesser-known brand, similar to what's being sold here:

https://www.amazon.com/Thunderbolt-...977&sr=8-30&keywords=5+drive+RAID+thunderbolt

But when your hardware raid fails, well your raid array is toast unless you go out and purchase another compatible box. You don't have the same constraint with software RAIDs, even if the host computer fails.

For RAID 0 and mirror, there are no calculations and its a simple thing for SW to do. For other RAID types it may make more sense with hardware. But with the advent of large disk drives, the need for more sophisticated RAID concepts have been OBE except for some very specialized applications. Recovering a hardware RAID5 array that has large drives from a disk failure is brutal. Takes a long time (think days) with degraded performance and with no protection until recovered. Been there, done that. Most RAID architectures have some very interesting vulnerabilities, and are subject to unrecoverable corruption pathologies.

So, for all except some very specialized applications stick with RAID 0 for speed and Mirror for redundancy. You can easily built a simple 18TB volume, need something larger then you are getting into special circumstances. Hard drives are so cheap now that other kinds of RAIDs have no benefit for the average user.

 

[kingtj]

Yes, this is all true. Except I always remind people that RAID is not intended to serve as *backup*. It's only there to improve your odds of keeping your system running without interruption if a drive fails.

At the end of the day? I guess it all comes down to trying to place a bet on which component is more likely to fail on you, and trying to engineer things so a loss of that one won't stop you from working in the middle of a project. The usual bets for "most likely to fail" wind up your spinning hard drives, vs. a hardware RAID controller with no moving parts.

That doesn't always work out, though. (I remember a couple of times we had Dell PowerEdge servers with PERC hardware RAID controller cards in them that failed on us, and caused large amounts of downtime when those cards were no longer in production and good, used replacements had to be located and ordered online. In hindsight, the smart thing to do would have been to purchase a spare PERC controller just for such a situation.)

But I guess my main point is, the concerns of a RAID 5 system (or other similar form of it) being vulnerable during the time window when it's doing a "rebuild" after a failed drive is replaced shouldn't be big issues if you're constantly doing a Time Machine or other backup of your data.

Software RAID solutions have their own potential vulnerabilities, including bugs in the software causing data corruption, or even situations where an OS X upgrade to a new version results in the software RAID driver not being 100% compatible anymore. And while it hasn't ever come up (that I know of) as a problem on the Mac, there's potential for a virus or malware to attack the software RAID driver when it detects its presence, ensuring data loss or corruption.

But when your hardware raid fails, well your raid array is toast unless you go out and purchase another compatible box. You don't have the same constraint with software RAIDs, even if the host computer fails.

For RAID 0 and mirror, there are no calculations and its a simple thing for SW to do. For other RAID types it may make more sense with hardware. But with the advent of large disk drives, the need for more sophisticated RAID concepts have been OBE except for some very specialized applications. Recovering a hardware RAID5 array that has large drives from a disk failure is brutal. Takes a long time (think days) with degraded performance and with no protection until recovered. Been there, done that. Most RAID architectures have some very interesting vulnerabilities, and are subject to unrecoverable corruption pathologies.

So, for all except some very specialized applications stick with RAID 0 for speed and Mirror for redundancy. You can easily built a simple 18TB volume, need something larger then you are getting into special circumstances. Hard drives are so cheap now that other kinds of RAIDs have no benefit for the average user.