Raid 1 + 0 Question

[igentz]

OK I do some Video Editing and Motion Graphics with FCP and Adobe After Effects.

I have a Mac Pro 2009 with 4 1TB Drives and 2 1TB Lacie Fire Wire 800 Drives.

This is the setup i have

1st Drive Mac OSX

2nd Drive is Windows 7 OS

3rd & 4th Striped and Mirrored to the 2 Lacies External Drives that are Striped. (raid 1 + 0)

My first question: is this a bad system? should i set it up a different way?

Second: is If a Drive goes out in the Raid 1+0 how will i know and how can i put a new drive in to fix it? How does this work?

Third: I set the RAID up with disk utility, is this ok, bad or good?

Fourth: IF the the OS Drive goes out will and i replace it and format it, will the RAID 1+0 Still be there? some where i read that its OS dependant? Please Explain.

If some one could give some helpful advice it would be greatly appreciated

-Gentz

 

[Gav2k]

In theory it should be ok reality is the externals are holding the raid array up.

 

[igentz]

In theory it should be ok reality is the externals are holding the raid array up.

What do you mean by "Holding the Raid Array up"? You mean slow it down? beacuse I dont want it to be slower i want more performence with reliability! How else could i do this with out spending a fortune?

 

[nanofrog]

OK I do some Video Editing and Motion Graphics with FCP and Adobe After Effects.

I have a Mac Pro 2009 with 4 1TB Drives and 2 1TB Lacie Fire Wire 800 Drives.

This is the setup i have

1st Drive Mac OSX

2nd Drive is Windows 7 OS

3rd & 4th Striped and Mirrored to the 2 Lacies External Drives that are Striped. (raid 1 + 0)

My first question: is this a bad system? should i set it up a different way?

Second: is If a Drive goes out in the Raid 1+0 how will i know and how can i put a new drive in to fix it? How does this work?

Third: I set the RAID up with disk utility, is this ok, bad or good?

Fourth: IF the the OS Drive goes out will and i replace it and format it, will the RAID 1+0 Still be there? some where i read that its OS dependant? Please Explain.

If some one could give some helpful advice it would be greatly appreciated

-Gentz

FW could be slowing you down, as I don't know the specific drives used, and if they each have their own port or are daisy chained together (internal or not).

It also appears you don't have a backup system, and RAID is NOT a backup. You make a mistake, and it's gone (i.e. accidental deletion). A pair of drives in the array goes, and it's gone.

Move one of the OS drives to the empty optical bay (assuming it exists), and use the remaining 2 internal drives in a stripe. This leaves you with an open HDD bay, and it can be used for something else or to increase capacity via a 3rd drive (backups are needed to restore the data from the existing array).

Use the FW drives for backup.

 

[antibact1]

This is a terrible setup in principle because any RAID configuration should have identical drives, preferably from the same production batch. This will allow all drives in the array to respond identically in the configuration. As well, do you have a strategy in place for if you lose a drive? Do you have a spare of each type of drive on hand? If not, you may want to get the drives or reconsider your setup. There is a reason businesses have 4 hour SLAs on replacement drives.

Edit: If you're looking for performance and reliability, it's going to cost you. There are more cost effective ways to do it, but how much is your data worth to you?

 

[lemonade-maker]

My suggestion:
4 drives in raid 0 in the regular bays
new drive in optical for winblows
1 of your external for TimeMachine
other external for clone, bootable backup

this my setup and I really like it. TimeMachine works well for incremental backup and carbon copy cloner to make the clone in case of failure.

 

[antibact1]

My suggestion:
4 drives in raid 0 in the regular bays
new drive in optical for winblows
1 of your external for TimeMachine
other external for clone, bootable backup

this my setup and I really like it. TimeMachine works well for incremental backup and carbon copy cloner to make the clone in case of failure.

4 drives in a RAID 0? If you lose one drive you lose everything, you have 0 redundancy. Even if your cloned external is the full size of all 4 internal drives, you have to restore the entire thing instead of just replacing a single drive and rebuilding the degraded array. This is the probably the riskiest setup I've ever heard of and is completely unnecessary. Try RAID 5 if you want to maximize your storage capacity and have redundancy.

 

[lemonade-maker]

4 drives in a RAID 0? If you lose one drive you lose everything, you have 0 redundancy. Even if your cloned external is the full size of all 4 internal drives, you have to restore the entire thing instead of just replacing a single drive and rebuilding the degraded array. This is the probably the riskiest setup I've ever heard of and is completely unnecessary. Try RAID 5 if you want to maximize your storage capacity and have redundancy.

The usage is assumed workstation. The only real risk is a tear down and rebuild of the of the raid 0. Mine takes about 20 mins and can be done with one less drive if needed. Shouldn't fill the raid 0 with half the total capacity. I never fill the capacity of one of my four 1.5tb drives. The advantage is speed and it is real and not very risky if you have good backups and aren't so paranoid. Redundant raid in a workstation is a PITA.

 

[nanofrog]

...any RAID configuration should have identical drives, preferably from the same production batch...

Identical drives is a better way to go, but not an absolute necessity.

But you don't want them from the same batch. The reason is, if there's a defect that's prevalent throughout the entire batch, it could cause all the drives to fail in rapid succession, leading to the loss of the array. Repairable, but it takes much more time, assuming there's proper backups, and even then, there's always the loss of the most recent files that were created/changed post the most recent backup image. In the case of the OP, where it seems there's no backup at all, it's a total disaster.

Besides backups, spares (drives at a minimum, and possibly RAID cards,...), and a good UPS are needed as well.