Advice needed: What HD set-up in 2009 MP?

[gadgetfreak98]

Hi. I have a 2009 8-core Mac Pro. Over the years, it had become pretty sluggish (notwithstanding a SSD boot drive), so I've decided to clean it up and make it fast again.

I use it mostly for non-professional purposes, but I do occasionally stress it with my photography habit (I shoot with a Canon 5D, Mk III, so image size is relatively large).

This weekend, I did an absolutely clean Mavericks install on a new OWC Accelsior boot drive. No migration assistant -- just fresh app reinstalls. This has cured whatever RAM leaks I had been suffering and the system is snappier for sure. I have my system and apps on this.

I also moved my User folder over to a new WD 4TB Black drive (had a 2TB I kept maxing out). Question is what should I do with the rest of my bays? I want to back up the User drive, so I had contemplated a duplicate WD 4TB Black for nightly cloning. But maybe I should do a Red instead for reliability?

Also, I'm thinking whether I should do a RAID setup (which I've never done) with two WD Black drives and mirror the RAID array to two Red 4TB drives for backup? That would seem to create more speed, capacity and redundancy?

I also have my 120GB OWC SSD to play with that was my boot drive, pre-Accelsior.

Finally, I bought a Drobo 5N on a holiday promotion. That's why I have all these raw drives sitting around. But I think I may be better off just setting everything up inside my machine itself?

Obviously I'm confused and looking for good suggestions! Goals are good speed, capacity and redundancy -- but isn't that what we all want?

Thanks!

 

[gadgetfreak98]

Anyone have any suggestions on my questions above? Thanks for any insights!

 

[funwithdesign]

Out of interest, why did you move the user folder to the slower HD rather than leave it on the SSD? That's going to affect the snappiness of some things, no?

Curious.

 

[gadgetfreak98]

Just too much data to make it cost effective to keep it on a SSD. So the system and applications are on the SSD. iPhoto library (~800GB), iTunes (also big), etc., are on the traditional HD. If I could afford 100% solid-state for the entire system, I'd be all over it! If there's a better arrangement, I'm definitely open to suggestions. Thanks.

 

[funwithdesign]

Just too much data to make it cost effective to keep it on a SSD. So the system and applications are on the SSD. iPhoto library (~800GB), iTunes (also big), etc., are on the traditional HD. If I could afford 100% solid-state for the entire system, I'd be all over it! If there's a better arrangement, I'm definitely open to suggestions. Thanks.

If it were me, I'd have just moved over the larger libraries. iTunes and iPhoto/Aperture both give you the ability to set where they live.

That's how I have it set up. Even my downloads folder is on the other drive. Moving the user folder seems like too much work to me.