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To RAID or not to RAID

macsForLife

macsForLife

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 8, 2008
76
0
Hey guys, I have a 2012 MBP right now, 2.3/16gb/500gb, other than the ram it's all stock. Running Mavericks. I've got an extra 500gb 2.5" 5400 rpm drive sitting around, and I could really use the extra space on this machine at the moment.

I'm trying to decide if it's worth it to go for a RAID 0 setup or not. Am I going to see a decent speed increase if I choose to go this way? Any chance I might hit 250 MB/sec in at least reads? Also, really the more pressing question...am I really looking at a substantial increase in chance that the array would fail if I do so? Is it reasonable to expect at least another 9-12 months of reliable use out of such a setup? The other drive hasn't been in use for about a year and a quarter, was in use for about 2 years before that. I realize that of course the chance that something will go wrong necessarily doubles with a stripped setup, but at the moment, the storage and the speed would be nice. Any compelling reasons not to go for it?

Thanks so much in advance.
 
Just a quick update, the drive is in, and formatted. I had read a few posts saying that moving the user folder to a separate drive might speed up things a bit without necessarily having to put the disks in RAID. Is there any truth to that?
 
macsForLife said:
Hey guys, I have a 2012 MBP right now, 2.3/16gb/500gb, other than the ram it's all stock. Running Mavericks. I've got an extra 500gb 2.5" 5400 rpm drive sitting around, and I could really use the extra space on this machine at the moment.

I'm trying to decide if it's worth it to go for a RAID 0 setup or not. Am I going to see a decent speed increase if I choose to go this way? Any chance I might hit 250 MB/sec in at least reads? Also, really the more pressing question...am I really looking at a substantial increase in chance that the array would fail if I do so? Is it reasonable to expect at least another 9-12 months of reliable use out of such a setup? The other drive hasn't been in use for about a year and a quarter, was in use for about 2 years before that. I realize that of course the chance that something will go wrong necessarily doubles with a stripped setup, but at the moment, the storage and the speed would be nice. Any compelling reasons not to go for it?

Thanks so much in advance.
Click to expand...

In a Pegasus R6 12TB, you can get 750MB/s writes and 550MB/s reads.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-T_pAioiW8
 
Trust me if I had the money I'd have one of those. Right now things are tight, that's why I went with the extra 500gb drive I had sitting around. Ultimately the plan is to get two SSDs in here in a RAID 0 array, and a nice 3tb Time Capsule for backups and extra storage.
 
macsForLife said:
Trust me if I had the money I'd have one of those. Right now things are tight, that's why I went with the extra 500gb drive I had sitting around. Ultimately the plan is to get two SSDs in here in a RAID 0 array, and a nice 3tb Time Capsule for backups and extra storage.
Click to expand...

I think you'll be better off putting one of the SSDs into your Mac. Then your Mac will be really fast (for starters, your Mac will boot up in just 12 seconds).

Put the 500GB HDD and another SSD in an RAID0 configuration. It's still plenty fast this way.
 
Unfortunately that's not an option right now, I can only work with what I've got at the moment. Attempting to move the home folder so far has taken 2 hours of my night and still given me nothing so far as well, so I might just have to RAID them together in order to make efficient use of this space.
 
From what I can see is that currently you do not have a backup procedure. Personally I would stay well away from the RAID 0 configuration you are proposing. Doing a RAID 0 with old disks is extremely risky, if you lose 1 drive you will lose everything. Having a time machine backup in my opinion is not enough when having a RAID 0 configuration. Ideally you should have a constantly updated bootable clone of your system using apps like Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDruper.

In my opinion the speed increase wouldn't offset the high risks of losing everything. If you were stripping 2 new drives I would say go ahead (you still need to have a thorough backup plan though). Doing it with old drives is not a good idea.

To calculate roughly the max Sequential speed you can reach, use Black Magic Speed test and figure out the speed of the drives. Then add them together; that would give you a rough indication of the Sequential speed. I doubt the set up will hit 250MB/s.

I heard that some people removed the Home folder form the main drive to another drive. However in order to get a speed increase they left the system drive as bare as possible which won't help you right now since you said you need the extra capacity. The speed increase is not that great compared to stripping.

Personally I would just drop the 2nd drive in the laptop and use it as a 2nd hard drive. I know you don't get any of the speed increases but in my opinion it is easier and less risky that way. Any way you are going to work make sure you have a very good back up plan.
 
RAID 0 offers an increase in speed and increased storage, but a t a risk, as mentioned. If any part of the array runs into problems you lose all your data.

You need a solid backup strategy, I personally think its too risky but that's just me.
 
Thanks guys. Decided to avoid the risk for now.

In regards to moving my home folder, I am running into some trouble. When I try to drag and drop the folder from a separate Admin account, eventually it quits after a certain amount has been transferred, citing that I don't have permission to move the items in the folder. I've been reading around and I've seen that Mavericks seems to be less friendly towards this than past OS X versions...is there anything I can do to avoid this error? So far I've gotten error codes 8003 and 8062. Thanks.
 
Thunderbolt RAID

yjchua95 said:
In a Pegasus R6 12TB, you can get 750MB/s writes and 550MB/s reads. ...
Click to expand...

I would prefer T12-S6.TB
http://www.datoptic.com/ec/thunderbolt-trayless-twelve-sata-6gb-s-hardware-raid5-6-quiet-tower.html

it's 700MB+ both read and write

As for OP...

I would highly recommend to use SSD on your MBP.
RAID0 would increase your sequential R/W but not so much in random mode..SSD will improve lot more in random R/W.

Put the 500GB in a USB3.0 enclousre
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817392043

Now you have space and FAST.
 
macsForLife said:
Thanks guys. Decided to avoid the risk for now.

In regards to moving my home folder, I am running into some trouble. When I try to drag and drop the folder from a separate Admin account, eventually it quits after a certain amount has been transferred, citing that I don't have permission to move the items in the folder. I've been reading around and I've seen that Mavericks seems to be less friendly towards this than past OS X versions...is there anything I can do to avoid this error? So far I've gotten error codes 8003 and 8062. Thanks.
Click to expand...

I ran 2 different RAID concatenated set-ups using a total of 5 old external HDDs for 4 years with no problems. Just make sure you back up.

>
 
I'm one to RAID0 anything. I have to get a optibay thing for my MBP then I'll do the RAID in this. My Mac Pro previously had a crap Kingston SSDNow that had about 110MB R/W and just got 2x320GB seagates in RAID0 and my R/W is now like 220MB. But if you do this like others have said get lots of external space :D
 
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