Scratch, PP, Thunderbolt, Server and eSATA Questions

[olindacat]

I am sure I am doing it wrong. When I bought my 2011 iMac i7 3.4, I hired someone to install and stripe two Vortex 240GB SSDs and install an eSATA plug to connect my an OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 8TB Raid 5. (Affordable Thunderbolt drives, if any, weren't avail at that time.)

I have both my project files and my apps on the stripped SSDs. I know this is wrong.

I don't know how scratch works exactly (spooling as renders or something) and in old days I remember being able to allocate space just for that. In any event, I have read here that I need Apps on one drive, project files on fastest, and then I guess archives and other files (incl TM back-ups) on another. Right now the latter is on the Qx2.

I have waited for SSD and Thunderbolt prices to fall to an affordable point, so is this 2011 worth adding to, or should I wait and buy a newer iMac to upgrade everything. And how?

Do I separate the two SSDs from the 0 Stripe so as to have one for apps and one for projects (240GB is a lot for apps no?)? If so, how do I do that?

What about Thunderbolt? Is it as fast as the internal 'bus' (does an iMac even have a bus?)? How can I leverage what I have to do it right?

As mentioned above, I need to get my wife a new machine as hers is about eight years old. I can either give her mine and have her help with editing (preferred) and just get another and set both up as well as I can, based on any advice given. That leads me to my last question: is an old 2006ish Mac Mini good enough for a networkable file server and if not should I get a newer one also? Does anyone have any exp with networking two iMacs for video, using a server like a Mini who can ring in?

 

[dazey]

striping splits data onto two disks, half the data goes on one and half on the other sequentially. It means you are pulling from two disks at once, giving faster times but if one drive fails you loose everything. To separate them you need to take all the data off the disks and then reformat them as two separate drives. Striping is really more relevant to spinning disks unless you have serious speed needs.

 

[ChrisA]

The reason you place apps and data on different disks really only applies to spinning hard drives. You do this to avoid what they call "head contention". That means the read write head is forced to move between two locations. But the SSD has no read/write head so the "seek time" is zero. With SSD you can put everything on one drive, if it will fit.

The head movement problem was a big deal. You can't read or write any data when the head is seeking. SSD solves that problem completely.

 

[olindacat]

striping splits data onto two disks, half the data goes on one and half on the other sequentially. It means you are pulling from two disks at once, giving faster times but if one drive fails you loose everything. To separate them you need to take all the data off the disks and then reformat them as two separate drives. Striping is really more relevant to spinning disks unless you have serious speed needs.

Thanks for responding dazey. I did just what you said and installed M Lion and managed to somehow boot from it and my Qx2. I now have two separate SSD drives inside the iMac. I am using one for app, one for projects, which I am now hearing may not be necessary. I wonder if I RAID 1 the two, if that would protect in case of drive failure? Or, would it be a waste of speed (meaning, maybe better to have back-up of OS/Apps on DAS). Thanks again!

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The reason you place apps and data on different disks really only applies to spinning hard drives. You do this to avoid what they call "head contention". That means the read write head is forced to move between two locations. But the SSD has no read/write head so the "seek time" is zero. With SSD you can put everything on one drive, if it will fit.

The head movement problem was a big deal. You can't read or write any data when the head is seeking. SSD solves that problem completely.

That helps a lit. I had no idea this was the case. Thanks!