Mirroring Mac Pro on Macbook

[Kilroyjw]

I have a Mac Pro on which I do a lot of audio production work. The Pro has three different hard drives: my boot drive, another drive called "Projects" and another called "Sample Libraries."

I build audio projects on the "Projects" drive. These projects load VSTs and samples from the "Sample Libraries" drive. I then take those projects and put them on my MacBook for live use on stage. The problem comes when I move the projects over, and my MacBook has no drive called "Sample Libraries," so I have to point everything to the correct location for the samples. And then when I move it back to my Mac Pro for more editing or revision, I have to repeat the drill two more times.

I am getting a 500gb replacement drive for my MacBook on Wednesday. If I create partitions called "Projects" and "Sample Libraries" will this fix the problem above? Or would I need to attach multiple physical drives to my Macbook to fix it?

If the above will work, please tell me the order in which I should do this. I need to clone my existing MacBook hard drive onto the replacement drive. Should I do that first, and them set up the partitions, or do the partitions have to be set up first? Will I need to format the drive before I do anything else?

Thanks for the help,

Kilroy

 

[rowsdower]

I think you could use disk images instead of partitions to simplify this considerably. It will require that you have enough free space on your Mac Pro's main drive to store full copies of your "extra" drives.

Open Disk Utility (Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility) on your Mac Pro and look for the Projects and Sample Libraries drives on the left side. Click on one of them and then click "New Image" at the top of the window. Change the image format from compressed to read/write. Do the same thing for the other one.

If you open these disk image files on your MacBook, they should show up as drives in Finder.

 

[Kilroyjw]

Hi Rowsdower,

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, the sample libraries on my Mac Pro drive are over 400 gigabytes, so the "Sample Libraries" drive on my MacBook will be a subset (just what I need to play live) of what is on my Mac Pro. The The Mac Pro disk images would never fit on my MacBook.

Having said that, do you think the idea I outline above will work, and if so, in what order should I set it up?

Regards,

Kilroy

I think you could use disk images instead of partitions to simplify this considerably. It will require that you have enough free space on your Mac Pro's main drive to store full copies of your "extra" drives.

Open Disk Utility (Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility) on your Mac Pro and look for the Projects and Sample Libraries drives on the left side. Click on one of them and then click "New Image" at the top of the window. Change the image format from compressed to read/write. Do the same thing for the other one.

If you open these disk image files on your MacBook, they should show up as drives in Finder.

 

[rowsdower]

I think you could still use disk images. Just create an empty disk image called Sample Libraries, mount it on the Mac Pro, and copy over the files you need.

It should work with multiple partitions as well. I am assuming you have a USB enclosure so that you can have both the old and new drives plugged into the MacBook at the same time. Put the new drive in the MacBook and boot from the Leopard install DVD. Once the installer is running, you can run Disk Utility from the Utilities menu at the top of the screen. Create the three partitions sized however you want them. Once Leopard is installed on the new drive, put the old drive in the USB enclosure and run Migration Assistant (Applications->Utilities->Migration Assistant) to copy your data and programs.

There are ways to do this by directly cloning the old drive onto the new one and therefore bypass the Leopard installation and Migration Assistant, but they are complicated by the fact that you want to repartition as well. I'm not sure what the best way to clone it would be, but a lot of people recommend Carbon Copy Cloner. If you want to go that route, I can give you some information about repartitioning the new drive without losing your data.

 

[Kilroyjw]

Okay, you have sold me on the disk image idea. (-: Seems like it is simpler and more flexible than the partitions. One question, just to make sure. I am going to be streaming multiple large sample files simultaneously live on stage. Is a disk image going to provide data access just as fast as a partition or any other file on the volume?

I think you could still use disk images. Just create an empty disk image called Sample Libraries, mount it on the Mac Pro, and copy over the files you need.

It should work with multiple partitions as well. I am assuming you have a USB enclosure so that you can have both the old and new drives plugged into the MacBook at the same time. Put the new drive in the MacBook and boot from the Leopard install DVD. Once the installer is running, you can run Disk Utility from the Utilities menu at the top of the screen. Create the three partitions sized however you want them. Once Leopard is installed on the new drive, put the old drive in the USB enclosure and run Migration Assistant (Applications->Utilities->Migration Assistant) to copy your data and programs.

There are ways to do this by directly cloning the old drive onto the new one and therefore bypass the Leopard installation and Migration Assistant, but they are complicated by the fact that you want to repartition as well. I'm not sure what the best way to clone it would be, but a lot of people recommend Carbon Copy Cloner. If you want to go that route, I can give you some information about repartitioning the new drive without losing your data.

 

[Consultant]

Okay, you have sold me on the disk image idea. (-: Seems like it is simpler and more flexible than the partitions. One question, just to make sure. I am going to be streaming multiple large sample files simultaneously live on stage. Is a disk image going to provide data access just as fast as a partition or any other file on the volume?

You always want to test it in as close to event condition as possible.

There are different options to make sure there is enough speed.
a. take out optical drive and put in SSD drive.
b. get firewire 800 raid, the 2.5" version can be bus powered via firewire.

 

[rowsdower]

I haven't done any testing, but I think performance should be comparable for any solution using a single drive (files on the same partition, files on different partitions, or disk images on the same partition). There will be a little bit of overhead with disk images since you are essentially going through two filesystems to get to the data, but your real bottleneck is probably the drive speed anyway (especially seek time for streaming multiple files). Definitely try it before you perform with it.

 

[NeGRit0]

Could always get a Seagate 7200.4 (500GB 7200rpm HDD) that should help with the lag, if there were to be any. I know i noticed the diffeence when i put one in my Blackbook.