Want RAID Array

[Mufasa804]

Greetings!

I've been having trouble finding a good solution so I figured I would ask the public for their advice.

I have two SATA3 (6 Gbit/s) drives that I want to RAID. I own a 2012 MacBook Pro and a 2009 24" iMac. In the future I plan on buying a Mac Mini that would primarily it plugged into.

Anyways, I've looked at the following:

OWC Mercury Elite + Thunderbolt Bundle

NewerTech Guardian

The benefit of the Mercury + Thunderbolt bundle is that it supports the newer SATA 3 drives and can take advantage of the 6Gbit/s, but then I'm only limited to using this array with my MacBook Pro, and my iMac would be out of luck.

So I looked for something that would have USB 3.0 (Speeds close to Thunderbolt) and FW800 for iMac hookup. The NewerTech Guardian meets those specs but it uses SATA 2 controllers so my drives would be limited to the 3Gbit/s.

Would I notice the difference if I'm mainly going to be using it to transfer and store movies? Playback would be done off the external. I would also be doing some editing off the external but not often.

What other options out there am I missing?

 

[paulrbeers]

Greetings!

I've been having trouble finding a good solution so I figured I would ask the public for their advice.

I have two SATA3 (6 Gbit/s) drives that I want to RAID. I own a 2012 MacBook Pro and a 2009 24" iMac. In the future I plan on buying a Mac Mini that would primarily it plugged into.

Anyways, I've looked at the following:

OWC Mercury Elite + Thunderbolt Bundle

NewerTech Guardian

The benefit of the Mercury + Thunderbolt bundle is that it supports the newer SATA 3 drives and can take advantage of the 6Gbit/s, but then I'm only limited to using this array with my MacBook Pro, and my iMac would be out of luck.

So I looked for something that would have USB 3.0 (Speeds close to Thunderbolt) and FW800 for iMac hookup. The NewerTech Guardian meets those specs but it uses SATA 2 controllers so my drives would be limited to the 3Gbit/s.

Would I notice the difference if I'm mainly going to be using it to transfer and store movies? Playback would be done off the external. I would also be doing some editing off the external but not often.

What other options out there am I missing?

Most likely you won't notice a difference. SATA2 maxes out at 300MB/s. Mechanical hard drives at their absolute fastest (sequential large reads) do not even max out 200MB/s. Even two in RAID would only in some scenarios max out SATA2, but even then if only if you use "RAID0".

 

[Mufasa804]

Most likely you won't notice a difference. SATA2 maxes out at 300MB/s. Mechanical hard drives at their absolute fastest (sequential large reads) do not even max out 200MB/s. Even two in RAID would only in some scenarios max out SATA2, but even then if only if you use "RAID0".

That's what I was thinking, since I was mainly going to store important video files I was going to go with RAID 1. Thanks for your response!

 

[John Kotches]

That's what I was thinking, since I was mainly going to store important video files I was going to go with RAID 1. Thanks for your response!

If you want to maximize space, and minimize risk, you might consider going RAID-5 and buying a replacement up front. This way, when a drive fails the replacement is almost immediate minimizing your exposure.

Depending on how valuable the video data is, it might be a viable alternative to RAID-1 where your costs per GB of usable storage is 2x.

Anyway, "important" is one of those words that can have multiple meanings, so I wouldn't rule out have a backup of the array depending on how critical your needs are.

 

[opinio]

Greetings!

I've been having trouble finding a good solution so I figured I would ask the public for their advice.

I have two SATA3 (6 Gbit/s) drives that I want to RAID. I own a 2012 MacBook Pro and a 2009 24" iMac. In the future I plan on buying a Mac Mini that would primarily it plugged into.

Anyways, I've looked at the following:

OWC Mercury Elite + Thunderbolt Bundle

NewerTech Guardian

The benefit of the Mercury + Thunderbolt bundle is that it supports the newer SATA 3 drives and can take advantage of the 6Gbit/s, but then I'm only limited to using this array with my MacBook Pro, and my iMac would be out of luck.

So I looked for something that would have USB 3.0 (Speeds close to Thunderbolt) and FW800 for iMac hookup. The NewerTech Guardian meets those specs but it uses SATA 2 controllers so my drives would be limited to the 3Gbit/s.

Would I notice the difference if I'm mainly going to be using it to transfer and store movies? Playback would be done off the external. I would also be doing some editing off the external but not often.

What other options out there am I missing?

I have both those enclosures and run the owc one on the LaCie t-bolt esata hub. They both run around 240MB/s read and write on either esata or USB 3.0 GMAX on RAID 0. Yes you can switch the GMAX to stripped instead of RAID 1 mirror.

It's irrelevant about whether it is t-bolt, USB 3.0 or esata because the limiting factor is the drive speed. So unless you will run SSDs the read write speed is all the same. As I said I tested this and they are all the same.

If you are going to run RAID 1 then then the same would apply.
But...

I now use Apple software RAID and get 260MB/s on the same drives on RAID 0.

So I would suggest trying Apple raid in disk utility, but if you want an enclosure get the GMAX. It is a USB 3.0 and it has a better LED system for showing a failed drive in the mirror (one LED per drive, green good, red bad). The owc enclosure has one blue light. Owc said it should turn red is a drive is down but I am yet to experience that and it does not mention that in the manual.