(??) Mac Pro RAID vs Single Drives and SuperDuper..

[phildog33]

Question guys:

I am a professional photographer with ~8Tbs of files at the moment.

I currently use 2 Thecus N5200Pros in Raid 5 array. Each one has 5Tbs of drives in it.

I am waiting on the new mac pro and possibly raid card, but please advise..

I tried writing/accessing the RAID5 Thecus on a daily level (Cat6 speed Gigabit) and its TOO slow for huge 40megapixel files. Instead I did a small 2TB firewire 800 enclosure as local (working) storage in Raid 0. Its really nice and zippy fast and each night it slowly backsup the day of work to my Raid5 redundant array.

Each day around 8pm i worried that if something fails... Im going to loose all my clients files that day.. really bad.

I would love to use a good fast Raid5 array as my working-local storage, for the safety, etc... but its too slow on the Thecus over gigabit. Really.. FW800 is much better here. I know the XRAID over fiber channel would get me up to speed but the difference is $2000vs$10000.

More people that need fast I/O for local storage, what do you recommend??
Raid 0 a bunch of drives together and backup each night to the RAID5...

or get the new mac pro with raid card and use Raid 5 internally...

I think the fastest option there would be the JBOD style over SATA internal

P

p.s. Any recommendations for the scratch disk.. Ok to use all Hitachi 1TB 7200 rpm drives in there?

 

[Catch]

Tough choices...

I have been through what seems most storage solutions with similar problems to you. It always came back to the Xraid for me... In the end I bit the bullet and went with the Xraid. It hurt for the first 3 months, but now I am glad I did it. When I run out of space I will add another.

Storage is becoming a real pain even on a personal level with HD camcorders, Films, Photos and Music. Managing this digital lifestyle, especially with the wife and kids, is becoming a full time job!

Regards,


Catch

 

[pprior]

If all you need is storage for a single workstation, a good eSATA external array would be better use of funds IMO than an Xserve. You can get scalable size and speed and will cost probably 50% of what the xserve would cost. Much faster than ethernet and full redundancy.

You would need the eSATA card and then an array. I don't own one as I use a NAS over ethernet for my backup, but I don't have the volume you do.

Get a hot swap case with 5-10 disk capacity and you're good to go! Noise will be an issue perhaps, but depends on your application.

 

[JesterJJZ]

How long can you run SATA cables? I've been thinking about putting in an array and keeping it in another room. Is fiberchannel my only option for somthing like this? CAT5 is too slow for me.

 

[phildog33]

now that the macpro RAID card is available separate..

DO you think having the internal 4 SATA drives running on RAID 5 will be fast to read/write to???

Or is straight SATA (no raid config) still the fastest..

For example, I cant shoot tethered or record music over the gigabit connection to the NAS without crashing.

TO my firewire 800 2TB (Raid 0) everything is fine

How will 4TB in raid5 with the card work?
P

 

[Macinposh]

now that the macpro RAID card is available separate..

1.DO you think having the internal 4 SATA drives running on RAID 5 will be fast to read/write to???

2.Or is straight SATA (no raid config) still the fastest..

3.How will 4TB in raid5 with the card work?
P

1. The output of the MPs raidcard in Raid5 is,what,109MB/s? That is more than enough for photo use. If you do video,the 4 disk raid0 will get to about 300MB/s.
2.Straight sata config the restricting speed is the single disks speed, around 50-75MB/s,depending on the drive. So the raid5 beats it.

3.Apple doesnt have official support for the 1TB disks yet. Havent heard that they wouldnt work though?

 

[hayduke]

Xserve RAID is expensive, plus you need the fiber channel card for the Mac Pro. I'm in a somewhat similar situation and haven't yet decided, but I think the best alternative is an eSATA RAID, you won't be able to run this into another room though. The limit is a few meters at best AFAIK.