While I'm Waiting...How Would You Set This Bad Boy Up?

[MrPDaddyHimself]

I returned my first MP ordered January 8th. DOA with a bad internal bay (YTBD). Second one due to arrive no later than March 5th. I've waited 2 months for this sucka. I'll be using Adobe CS products, After Effects, Final Cut, gaming if possible. My understanding is that since I have the RAID card, I can't partition the boot drive to run XP for gaming and Mac OS for everything else.

I'm interested in how you would setup this RAID based on the programs I'l be using. I'm leaning towards RAID 5 or RAID 0 on 2 or 3 of the TB drives. Leaving 1TB for Apps, system (backed up to external via Time Machine) and 1 TB for Scratch disc space? Any advice would be appreciated.

Two 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeo
2GB (2x1GB) - (16 GB OWC waiting in box)
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB
1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/
1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb
1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb
1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb
One 16x SuperDrive
AirPort Extreme Card (Wi-Fi)
Mac Pro RAID Card
APPLE WIRELESS MIGHTY MOUSE
WIRED KYBRD/MAC OS X
Country Kit

 

[Tallest Skil]

PLEASE tell me you didn't buy HDDs from Apple. I'd say do a RAID 0 or a 0+1 since you have four.

 

[GregPacker]

I would leave a bloodied knife in its wardrobe.

What's your spec again, I keep missing the details...

 

[m1stake]

Raid 5. 3 data drives and a parity drive. If one drive fails, just replace it quickly and you're good to go.

3/4 of the disk space is usable space, 1/4 is parity data.

 

[Arjy]

RAID 0+1. 2tb with data security, at near 15k rpm speeds. Nice.

 

[MrPDaddyHimself]

PLEASE tell me you didn't buy HDDs from Apple. I'd say do a RAID 0 or a 0+1 since you have four.

OK, I wont tell you I bought HDDs from Apple. 0+1 may be the winner.

 

[MrPDaddyHimself]

Got my MP today. However, when using the RAID utility I didn't see an option for creating a 0+1 RAID. Only 0 when selecting all 4 drives? So, I'm currently creating a 0 RAID using drives 3 and 4. Can anyone tell me if its still possible to creat a RAID 0+1 without deleting this RAID set, reformatting the 2 drives as JBOD and starting over?