Best Use of 6 Hard Drives in My 2009 Mac Pro? (Scratch Disk)

[sammyman]

I just ordered the OWC hard drive holder for 2 2.5" hard drives. I noticed my 2009 MP only comes with one plug for 1 drive. Do I need a splitter to plug in both drives?

This is how I want to set things up. I would love feedback as well.

Drive Bays

1. 128GB SSD - Boot Drive
2. 500GB 7200 2.5" - Scratch Disk + Clone of Boot?

4 HDD Bays

1. 1.5 TB 7200rpm - RAID 0 Master 1
2. 1.5 TB 7200rpm - RAID 0 Master 2
3. 2TB 5900rpm Green Drive - TM
4. 2TB 5900rpm Green Drive - TM

This looks like a good setup, but is it ideal for Photoshop work? Also, I am a little worried that this will not be enough room. Aside from the drives above I have 2 more 5900 2TB drives. I also have a 2tb firewire drive, and a 1tb usb drive.

I am going into this mac with a little more than 2TB of storage, so I think the 2.7TB Master drive will not be enough. Should I just do TM on an external drive or NAS and have the 4 x 2TB slower drives for my Master? Or will this slow things down at all, specifically in Photoshop?

Any advice on how you would tackle this? Thanks!

 

[sammyman]

Ok, I am struggling with how to do 2 drives in the optical bay. I guess I would have to unplug the superdrive. So I think that means I am limited to 5 drives. Not really sure why I bought this:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MM352A52MP9/ if I can only have 1 drive in the optical bay

1. SSD - Boot
2. Cache - 640GB 7200rpm drive that comes with the Mac + clone of Boot + Windows Partition?

3-5. 3 x 1.5TB 7200rpm drives in RAID 0 for Master Drive

Does this sound better? It would mean time machine on an external NAS, which is OK, but my synology has been RMA'd twice so I am a little sick of it.

 

[mjsmke]

Sounds good as long as you have a good back up plan for your RAID0 array.

I have:

120GB SSD - Boot
640GB WD Black - Scratch/Boot clone
x2 1TB Samsung F3 - Raid0 - Current work/Home folder
2TB WD Green - Complete work/Itunes

2TB external - Time machine - backs up all excluding complete work
160GB external - boot clone
various other extenals - complete work backup.

If i could justify the expense i would have 2 SSD's in Raid0 for current work/home folder, and another SSD as a scratch disk.

At the moment im saving up for some other upgrades.

 

[sammyman]

That looks like exactly what I will do.

The only thing I was curious about now is the scratch disk. I read somewhere that with enough RAM, you don't need a dedicated scratch disk. I will hopefully have 32GB of RAM soon, so would it be faster to not have a dedicated scratch?