raid 0 on a powermac G5

[maniac330]

I was thinking of installing a second 500BG hard drive in my powermac G5 and setting it up for raid 0. Will i notice any major increase in performance? (i'm planning on running Windows XP x64 on the system through Parallels Desktop)

specs:
dual 2.5GHz processor
2.5GB ram

 

[maniac330]

Also, how do you access the raid settings on a mac?

 

[Lovesong]

Well...
First off you will need to repartition your HD. That means that all your data will be gone. You do this after you install your second HD. Reboot using the disk, and enter Disk Utility, which will alow you to RAID your drives, either in RAID 0, 1, or JBRD. From there you can reinstall OS X on your Huge HD, and be ready to rock.
Your performance will increase. Whether or not it will be that noticeable is a question of what you'll be doing. Larger files will be tranfered and saved faster, smaller ones about the same.
My question is how are you planning on running XP on a PPC machine without using an emulator. As far I know, Parallels requires an Intel processor.

 

[maniac330]

Hmm... If parallel's won't work, what emulator would you recommend?

 

[cblackburn]

Hmm... If parallel's won't work, what emulator would you recommend?

What do you want to do under windows? Any emulator running windows on a PowerPC mac is going to have to translate the Intel machine code instructions. Emulating a CISC machine on a RISC platform is the ideal situation as far as emulation goes but you are not going to get high performance.

Chris

 

[CanadaRAM]

For most single-user applications, RAID0 will provide little or no real-world speed improvement.

And it increases the chance of catastrophic failure; an error on any one drive can take out ALL your data on both drives.

 

[maniac330]

I must admit, I'm a PC guy who is trying to convert over to mac. I do graphic design work on my pc (primarily photo restoration) and i'd like to keep using the PC software I have already purchased (Photoshop, illustrator) on my mac. I usually use a dual VGA setup with my work on one screen and toolbars on another, but I normally don't run more than 2 or 3 apps at a time. I don't really need a full TB of memory, I just thought putting my current hard drive in raid 0 with another might give a big performance boost.
If it's a big data risk, then I probably won't do it. However I still would like to know what kind of emulator would be best for my application.

Thanks guys,
Novice MacUser

 

[Dreadnought]

For a G5 or other PPC processor you are stuck with Virtual PC from M$. It works real crappy and slow because it needs to emulate everything (graphics card, sound card, ehternet, every bit of hardware!). You can't even compare it with a P3 at 800 mhz, more like a P2 at 400 mhz.

When you do need windows, get a Mac with an Intel proc. Then it can run windows at native speed. Also, don't hold out on the ram of the Mac. If you use photoshop and other apps like that, get 2 GB, it will make your Mac a lot faster!