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Portable Raid for PB 15 1.67

O

Onkelskrue

macrumors member
Original poster
May 25, 2005
31
0
Hi,
I am about to get a PB for mobile video editing. I need the portability, so I can't really go with a PM. My thoughts were using two 2.5 notebook HDs in a RAID 0 configuration, hooking them up to the firewire connection.

Question 1 - have anyone done such a thing before?
Question 2 - does anyone know of a dual notebook HD enclosure?
Question 3 - would the firewire connection have enough power to run 2 HDs?

Thougths?

Thanks,
Lars
 
?

Why don't you just try and find a 3.5" enclosure that has a small form factor? By the time you get two hooked into a RAID 0 it will almost be the same size. Well almost the same size.......

Nuc
 
Has anyone seen a battery powered 3.5'' enclosure?

I've seen a 2.5'' (google for 'battery powered hard drive enclosure') but 100GB max isnt really what i'm looking for.

I currently have a 300GB external in a firewire enclosure, and I'm thinking of adding a second one. If I add a second enclosure, and daisychain it to the first firewire enclosure, will I be able to RAID it? Is that a wise thing to do? :)

Otherwise I may have to resurrect my ancient PC and stuff it with drives, put a gigabit eithernet card in and use it as a fileserver, but i'd honestly rather not.

thanks

Tomato
 
Why not just a 1 TB LaCie external connected via FW800? Internally it is a RAID setup (drives connected via Firmware) and the FireWire 800 will be plenty fast.
 
Mechcozmo said:
Why not just a 1 TB LaCie external connected via FW800? Internally it is a RAID setup (drives connected via Firmware) and the FireWire 800 will be plenty fast.[/QUOTE
When it comes to Lacie the Big Disk Extreme seems to be cheaper alternative and it is also a RAID set up with cool two drives that fit in one slim case. Plus has the same FireWire 800.
Click to expand...
 
RedTomato said:
Has anyone seen a battery powered 3.5'' enclosure?
I've seen a 2.5'' (google for 'battery powered hard drive enclosure') but 100GB max isnt really what i'm looking for.
I currently have a 300GB external in a firewire enclosure, and I'm thinking of adding a second one. If I add a second enclosure, and daisychain it to the first firewire enclosure, will I be able to RAID it? Is that a wise thing to do? :)
Otherwise I may have to resurrect my ancient PC and stuff it with drives, put a gigabit eithernet card in and use it as a fileserver, but i'd honestly rather not.
Click to expand...
Confused. Do you want battery power, speed, portability or large size. These are mutually exclusive.

Battery: You won't see a battery powered 3.5" drive rig unless it is a lashup with a honking big battery. Laptop drives are much less hungry. Of course, they are also smaller and slower.

Go with a 3.5" drive for high capacity, not multiple 2.5's. Some of the LaCie drives do indeed use two 3.5" mechanisms in a hardware RAID 0 within their case.

Remember though that RAID 0 is a terrible thing to do in terms of data reliability. A problem with the drive or interface on any one of the drives and you lose all the data on both. You gotta be extra careful to back up.

If you REALLY want higher performance, you need to put the drives on separate busses. When you put a RAID on a Firewire controller (even if the machine has two FW jacks, they are on the same controller) it's like putting a Y connector on the end of a garden hose. You don't get more total volume through the hose. If you had two separate busses (two FW controllers) then that is like bringing in a second hose from another tap - you get a net near-doubling of bandwidth.

On a Powerbook 15" or 17", you can install a PCMCIA card Firewire 800 interface, and RAID that with the the onboard FW800 interface. With high speed 3.5" drives, that's as good as you are going to get on the Powerbook.
Barefeats.com has done some testing and reporting on this subject.

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com
 
CanadaRAM said:
Confused. Do you want battery power, speed, portability or large size. These are mutually exclusive.

Battery: You won't see a battery powered 3.5" drive rig unless it is a lashup with a honking big battery. Laptop drives are much less hungry. Of course, they are also smaller and slower.

Go with a 3.5" drive for high capacity, not multiple 2.5's. Some of the LaCie drives do indeed use two 3.5" mechanisms in a hardware RAID 0 within their case.

Remember though that RAID 0 is a terrible thing to do in terms of data reliability. A problem with the drive or interface on any one of the drives and you lose all the data on both. You gotta be extra careful to back up.

If you REALLY want higher performance, you need to put the drives on separate busses. When you put a RAID on a Firewire controller (even if the machine has two FW jacks, they are on the same controller) it's like putting a Y connector on the end of a garden hose. You don't get more total volume through the hose. If you had two separate busses (two FW controllers) then that is like bringing in a second hose from another tap - you get a net near-doubling of bandwidth.

On a Powerbook 15" or 17", you can install a PCMCIA card Firewire 800 interface, and RAID that with the the onboard FW800 interface. With high speed 3.5" drives, that's as good as you are going to get on the Powerbook.
Barefeats.com has done some testing and reporting on this subject.

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com
Click to expand...


Thanks Trevor, you hit the nail on the head. Battery powered 2.5 drives might have been a solution, but I agree that using a firewire card that has enough juice to power the HD might be a better solution. Where I am going, there will be no electricity other than my rollable Brunton solar panel, thus I can not use anything that plugs into the wall.

Thanks all for your feedback!
Lars
 
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