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What do you think about this setup?

G

goldenhourfilms

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 10, 2009
28
0
So I am planning on setting this up on my Mac Pro. I am Film and Video editor and work with Avid and FCP. But its not a good idea to have both installed on on the same OS.

I want take two of my Western Digital 320GB had drives and Raid them in Raid0. That should give me 596.2GB of storage. I want to then take that and portion it into 3 portions. two of them being equal @ 248.1GB and the 3rd being at 100GB. On the two equal portions I want to have OS X 10.5.6 installed. One OS X version that will have FCP on it and the other having Avid on it. Either then that they will pretty much be the same systems meaning have everything that other has but one will run FCP and the other will have Avid. The third portion that the 100GB wil have windows XP installed on it. So I can have access to a PC and to some PC things.

My Media drives I will also raid in raid0 and they will be 3 Hitachi 1TB drives.
My questions are...
1. What do you guys think about this set up and will there be any performance issues?

2. Can I have two raids using the software raid OS X provides with one being bootable?

3. any opinions??

Thank you every one

BTW: I understand the risks of Raid0
 
Partition.

And I don't like it.

Better off getting a raptor for each OS and then using an external for XP.
 
Any reason why you need two OSes, do FCP and Avid not get along ?

As for Windows, afaik you can't run Windows on an Apple Software Raid array .
 
I didnt even think about that... that XP probably wont see the raid... hmm is there anyway to make it see it?

I have to have Avid on one and FCP on the other because of different version of codecs and FCP has a Blackmagic multi-bridge. I hear some people run both on the same drive and some have problems with it. I like to spend time cutting and less time trouble shooting so there for I want it to be streamlined for each Editor application
 
I also wanted to say, if I cant get XP to see thee Raid. The I will put it on an external driving using e-SATA. Will that work with XP? I know installing on a USB or Firewire drive wont work but I think an e-SATA will.

This will be connected to one of the free eSATA ports thats hidden in the Mac Pro

what do you think?
 
UltraNEO* said:
Really...

I'm curious. Are you speaking from recent experience?
Click to expand...

Just to toss this in- this is nothing new. XP was not designed to run from an external and won't even if it running in a straight PC environment.

In addition, the following is included in the FAQ's in the Apple Boot Camp Support section:
I have more than one hard drive, can I install Microsoft Windows on any drive?

You can install only one Windows partition on any of your computer volumes. The Setup Assistant will allow you to partition drives, or to install Microsoft Windows on an entire drive if it does not contain Mac OS X.

Note: You cannot install Microsoft Windows on an external hard drive.
Click to expand...
So like inigel said, unless there have been some recent substantial hacks developed to overcome the native inability of XP to run on an external this would still hold true.
 
sickmacdoc said:
J
So like inigel said, unless there have been some recent substantial hacks developed to overcome the native inability of XP to run on an external this would still hold true.
Click to expand...

I didn't do much research on it, but I believe some people had sucess with running a cloned XP on external eSata drives (via ODD Sata ports).

That said, it might be less hassle to just use an additional HDD in the lower optical drive bay for one of the media drives, or is that space already taken (counting 5 HDDs in your setup) ?
 
The lower part of the optical bay will hold drive that will be raided with the one in bay 1. This will be the two main drives.

I was wondering though... I understand you can not install XP on external drive. But using a eSATA all though its external. I don't think XP will see it that way. Since it will be connected to the eSATA port on the motherboard.

My new plan is if I can get XP onto that eSATA drive... is too have the two 320 in raid 0 and split them in half for two OS X installations one for Avid one for FCP. and Xp on the eSATA drive.

I would love to get the 10k drive but for the cost of it Im going to stay with the drives I have here. I can match the speed of it and even get a little more. Plus I will be backing up my system to a Raid1 drive used for Back Ups
 
goldenhourfilms said:
I was wondering though... I understand you can not install XP on external drive. But using a eSATA all though its external. I don't think XP will see it that way. Since it will be connected to the eSATA port on the motherboard.
Click to expand...

I'm afraid you can't use the ODD Sata ports on the motherboard for bootcamp, they are not recogniced by Windows .
Not unless you find some hack or workaround, it's been done before.

Imho, the most sensible solution for you might be going for a single, fast HDD for the two OSX partitions ( WD Black or such), one for XP, and your 3 media drives.

A fast boot drive doesn't make your programs run faster, btw, as long as you keep the files on a seperate drive - which is the point of having the Raid0 array for media, I guess ?

Or, you can mount two HDDs in the lower optical bay, for a total of six - look here .

Don't know how hot that gets though - I have a single drive mounted there, and it's by far the hottest.
 
Hmm I was under the imporetion that a faster Hard drive will give me better performance in OS X (which its great already) Coming from PC's when I had a raid for the OS install and programs, they did seem to respond much faster and there load times where faster also. Thats why I wanted to set up a raid for the OS X and its applications. I should look into any reviews to see if there are advantages to this.
 
Well, fwiw, check some of my xBench results , and also look here .

Lots of info on barefeats.com, too.
 

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  • xbench raid0-dual WD 640 Black.txt
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  • xbench single WD 500 Black.txt
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is there any reason why you wouldn't just make 2 partitions on your drive one Mac Os and one Windows and just run the Avid on the windows platform?
 
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