MBP 13 + Dual SSD (RAID 0 + RAID 1) Good idea?

[miata]

Has anybody else done something like this?

I want to get a 13" MBP 2.66 MHz 8 GB RAM with a pair of OWC 120 GB SSDs -- and I want the ultimate in performance and reliability.

I'm thinking that I would partition each 120 GB SSD into a 20 GB "data partition" and a "fast system partition" for the remainder. I would then configure the two data partitions into a RAID 1 disk and configure the other two partitions in to a RAID 0 partition. The idea is that I would boot off the fast RAID 0 disk and keep all my critical work files on the more reliable RAID 1 disk.

Does this strategy make sense? Is there a better way of getting performance and reliability with dual SSD drives -- without spending lots more money?

 

[Vanarak19]

Has anybody else done something like this?

I want to get a 13" MBP 2.66 MHz 8 GB RAM with a pair of OWC 120 GB SSDs -- and I want the ultimate in performance and reliability.

I'm thinking that I would partition each 120 GB SSD into a 20 GB "data partition" and a "fast system partition" for the remainder. I would then configure the two data partitions into a RAID 1 disk and configure the other two partitions in to a RAID 0 partition. The idea is that I would boot off the fast RAID 0 disk and keep all my critical work files on the more reliable RAID 1 disk.

Does this strategy make sense? Is there a better way of getting performance and reliability with dual SSD drives -- without spending lots more money?

Why bother with the 2 partitions?

 

[miata]

Why bother with the 2 partitions?

So, that I can use RAID 0 to optimize performance for system and application data and RAID 1 to improve reliability for important work files.

I haven't heard of anybody else doing this, but it kind of makes sense.

 

[SudoSSD]

You have a good idea, but it's more of a desktop solution, which can accommodate more drives. It doesn't make much sense with partitions.
Another issue with actual mirror drives is if there is a raid problem and all your data is corrupted, won't the mirrors also be in trouble?

SSD's are great and all, but using the limited space for backup?


My focus is to have a fast system and a secure backup.

I use CarbonCopy to keep a bootable clone of my system on an external drive. If anything fails I don't need to worry about any syncronicity issues of the raid data.

 

[miata]

You have a good idea, but it's more of a desktop solution, which can accommodate more drives. It doesn't make much sense with partitions.
Another issue with actual mirror drives is if there is a raid problem and all your data is corrupted, won't the mirrors also be in trouble?

SSD's are great and all, but using the limited space for backup?


My focus is to have a fast system and a secure backup.

I use CarbonCopy to keep a bootable clone of my system on an external drive. If anything fails I don't need to worry about any syncronicity issues of the raid data.

I use CCC together with Time Machine, but I can only access those while I'm at home. I had an HDD crash a few month back when my MBP slipped out of my backpack. Since then I put a 8 GB SD card in my MBP and backup my critical work files every hour. The SD card reader is in the ExpressCard lot and the card is completely flush with the system after taking a little sandpaper to it. I checked out the new MPBs and the SD card sticks out way too much to use that strategy.

I'm looking at taking a small slice from each drive to use as a reliable RAID 1 drive. The majority of my data will be on RAID 0. There shouldn't be any synchonization issues as MacOS makes all RAID 0 writes synchronously.

As a side note. I set-up something like this with a pair of eSATA drives and accidentally deleted one of the physical drives once. Of course, I completely lost my RAID 0 data, but my RAID 1 disk was there as if nothing had happened.

 

[miata]

Sounds like nobody is doing anything like this. Let me instead ask some specific questions:

1) Can I use Disk Utility to partition two disks and create a RAID 0 volume across the two partitions?

2) I've been reading that if one of the SSDs is in the optical bay that hibernation will not work? Is that true? And if so, is there a way to disable?

3) I've read that at least with an i7 system that you don't get the fullbenefit of RAID 0 unless you plug in a Firewire device. Weird, but apparently true for some systems. See this. Will this be an issue for the MBP 13?