Unusual HDs layouts (Raid, HD videos)

[uvitor]

Hi all, this is my first thread here and it's great to be part of the community.

I just ordered a MAc Pro (3.33 + 5870) Waiting to delivery
OWC- 16gb Ram
My question is about my HDs layouts. The use is basically for 1080p movies, watching and storage. (20-30gb each movie). I'm moving from a hackintosh.

They are all in the itunes library right now spammed to several HDs using TuneSpam app.
The perfect scenario would be just one big HD for my itunes movie library, not using the TuneSpam app.
I know that raid could archive that goal with several HDs appearing as one in OSX, but i never used raid before, and as you will see below, my HDs are mostly different from each other.
Is there a way to show several HDs as one without using raid?
My HDs:
1 x Crucial SSD 256mb -- boot, apps, home(Spammed by TuneSpam)
2 x 1,5 Tb Seagate 7200rpm
1 x 2 Tb Seagate 7200rpm
2 x 2 Tb Seagate 5900rpm

I'm doing backups for everything but movies (just 200gb).

Thank you very much for your time.

 

[nanofrog]

Yes, it's called JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks). Performance and reliability are still that of a single disk, but it appears as a single volume to the system (capacity of each disk is added to create the total capacity available).

You don't need any additional hardware or software, as OS X is capable of implementing it (under Disk Utility).

Hope this helps.

 

[uvitor]

Yes, it's called JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks). Performance and reliability are still that of a single disk, but it appears as a single volume to the system (capacity of each disk is added to create the total capacity available).

You don't need any additional hardware or software, as OS X is capable of implementing it (under Disk Utility).

Hope this helps.

Using JBOD:
I just read some texts about that non-raid setup and let's see if I understood:
Stay with ssd for boot and apps.
If I would have 5tb of movie, I could do an array with 2x seagates 2tbs, put 4tbs of data there. After that I just add one by one of others HDs on that array.
Is that Right? Am I missing something?
Thanks.

 

[nanofrog]

Using JBOT:
I just read some texts about that non-raid setup and let's see if I understood:
Stay with ssd for boot and apps.
If I would have 5tb of movie, I could do an array with 2x seagates 2tbs, put 4tbs of data there. After that I just add one by one of others HDs on that array.
Is that Right? Am I missing something?
Thanks.

Yes. The capacity adds, and the performance is that of a single disk (which ever one it's actually using at that instant, as JBODs tend to be a mix of capacity, makers and model numbers if from the same maker (is a good use for all the "orphan" drives lying around.)