What would be the most suitable Hard drive setup for me?

[oceanzen]

Hi,

I plan on getting an 8 core mac (I may wait for the next revision)
I'm primarily a musician that uses Logic Pro 7.2

Currently I have a Dual 2.0 GHz G5 Powermac, I have 2 hard drives, one for all my programs and the other for all my data. And a third external drive for backups.

For my final project at Uni I will be making a music video. I plan on using Motion 3 and FC, as well as Photoshop.

I'm pretty new to this side of computing, so I was wondering, what would be the best number/type of hard drives to get, and how should they be used?

I was thinking,

1 for programs
1 for video
1 for audio

1 external for backup/time machine.

But I read on here it may be better to have another one for scratch files or summat.

What would you recommend buying, drive wise?

Thanks

 

[suneohair]

RAID is a waste for these kinds of applications. I wouldn't do it. If you do a 0+1 you lose the speed gained by the striping. If you do a 5, with 3 drives, the chances of losing data is higher. I would invest more of offsite backups. Look into a Drobo if you have the cash and your data is important.

 

[oceanzen]

Thanks for your reply, I don't think what I described above is RAID, is it?

Do you know anything about scratch disks or can you recommend which size hard drives to go for?

Thanks

 

[suneohair]

You can set your apps to use a certain disk as scratch. I assumed you were looking for speed when you mentioned scratch.

For example is Photoshop you can tell it where to put its swap file.

I think 750s are the best bang for the buck right. Seagates are popular around here, the 5yr warranty I think. I like Western Digital. Samsung. I stay away from Maxtor, although I think Seagate bought them.

 

[Sean Dempsey]

RAID is a waste for these kinds of applications.

RAID 0? Can you explain why RAID 0 would be a waste for things like a scratch disk or access to files you are working on?

 

[suneohair]

RAID 0? Can you explain why RAID 0 would be a waste for things like a scratch disk or access to files you are working on?

Well first of all, RAID 0 isn't true RAID since there is no redundancy. RAID 0 excels in read only applications, like database and servers. The speed gain is minimal in a desktop application especially when using software RAID.

In a scratch situation there is simultaneous read and write. The point of striping (parity) is to write/read one bit at the same time as you write/read another. So in this situation you gain raw throughput. You can read or write theoretically twice as fast. However, in a scratch situation you have back and forth bursts. Which isn't using the throughput you have gained since you are slowed down by the disk itself.

Outputting a move file to a RAID might be quick, but you are still limited by how fast the CPU is churning it out.

If you ask most people who have apps on a RAID, there is a minimal increase in program start time.

Then there is redundancy, having two drives going increases the chances of one failing. If you output that video and then go to move it but one drives dies, bye bye data. The probability of a drive dying in a RAID 0 is higher than a single drive setup.

You can do it, I mean it doesn't really hurt you. Try it out. Software RAID is inferior to hardware RAID, I don't think there is much of a point really. Mainly because the speed increase in minimal due to the random access pattern and the chance of fault is higher.

I am trying to find benchmarks, its been awhile. If you want to get a real scratch disk that will probably offer more of a speed increase go SSD.