drive setup questions...

[Hummercash]

ok, so here is what i have to work with in my g5...
one 74gb raptor
two 400gb 'stock' sata drives
one 40gb 3g ipod
one 60gb photo ipod

this comp will be used for 'everyday' tasks as well as fcp, motion, dvdstudio, shake, logic, photoshop, flash and a few other things...

ill be turning my old PC into a server (i have about 600gb of space in that to work with). i plan on having it automount on all the macs in the house (my new g5 and 3 ibooks) so that we can all have a central music library that can be added to anyones ipod, and free up space on local drives. ill also use the server for backups.

so as for all the drives i listed above, here is what i was thinking about doing...
74gb raptor: boot drive, apps, scratch disk (should i make a second partition for the scratch disk or just leave that drive as one big partition?)
400gb: home directory, downloads, virtualpc partition, livetype fonts, etc.
400gb: media drive... all video, photoshop, websites, audio, etc.
40gb ipod: use as firewire drive... copy my home directory to that so i can take my settings w/ me wherever i go???
60gb ipod: use for music as a standard ipod

so does that seem like a pretty good setup or should i make some changes? im thinking i could put apps or scratch disk on the first 400gb hd instead of the raptor, but would i see any sort of difference? (i probably wont see any real world difference from that, right?)

ok, im tired... off to bed. leave me comments for when i wake up plz

thanks.

 

[alex_ant]

You don't have a girlfriend, do you?

 

[jeremy.king]

RAID the two 400GB drives...Your choice if you want to stripe or mirror...Personally, I would mirror.

 

[CanadaRAM]

Mmmm. How you gonna mount three SATA drives in the G5?

You'll either have to get a third party internal cage mount, or an external SATA enclosure. In either case you will have to get a SATA PCI or PCI-X interface card to plug in the third drive.

You can partition your scratch drive if you like
Pros: You can clean it off at will from temp files and photoshop scratch files, you ensure by makeing it the first partition that it will occupty the fastest sectors on the drive.

Cons: You care committing to a fixed size for the scratch partition. Re-partitioning (reformatting) to change size later will be ug-lee.

Here's what I would do, cost no object:

Raptor - Scratch and System only (no partitioning)
400 GB internal partitioned: 100 GB Applications, 300 GB personal data (non-speed-critical).
Firmtek PCI-X Serial ATA card with 4 external ports (or 2 internal, 2 external)
External FirmTek dual SATA hot-swappable enclosure
400 GB external SATA Media Data drive
OPTION
second 400 GB in the Firmtek External case, 2nd bay for Media Data
OPTION - RAID the two externals -- If you have a solid gold backup regimen only!!

I believe you'll get more bang for the buck splitting your applications onto a different spindle than your System/Scratch, than you would from RAID 0 striping the data together

RAID 1 Mirroring is always good from a security point of view, but it will cost you 400 Mb drive space and some loss of writing speed. But if you can set up a backup to your personal drive space of your most current work, and regular backups to your PC server, I don't think mirroring is necessary.

I don't think RAID 0 is a clear benefit over the risks involved.

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com

 

[ChrisFromCanada]

Personally I would avoid RAIDs as much as possible. they sound good on paper but in practical use they can have many difficulties outside of server use.

I would put OS X your apps and home directory on the Raptor then use one 400 GB for downloads, movies, and music and the other for a scratch disk.

Just use the iPods for Music and Pictures and the occasional small back-up.

For reference here is my set-up (it works very nicely):

EDIT: Forgot to say that all three internal drives are separate with no partitions. i hooked up the 3rd drive by splitting the ata cable going to the optical drive and resting the drive above the optical drive.

 

[Eniregnat]

Don’t pick in the guy.

Shake and DVD Studio Pro can be rendering and processor hogs- quickly spanning their scratch drives. Shake creates a separate flipbook (at least the previous versions did) as test renders of your compositing. Best media practices are generally your system and applications on your start up disk (duh), application scratches and prerenders on another, and your media clips on another. Running a mirrored RAID 5 is a happy in-between striping and mirroring.

If you can afford Shake, it is likely that you can afford another external drive for use as a scratch disk for your applications. It is just a suggestion.

I administrate a small audio studio, really basic kind of audio work. I have a few terabytes of media to manage. My NASs are all RAID5 and mirrored, that is the second NAS is an exact mirror of my primary file server. This setup has saved my ass on more than one occasion; add another level of redundancy in the fact that the workstations work with copies of the media before rewriting them to the primary server.

In any case, if you ever have to rebuild your mirrored raid, step aside and let it rebuild, don't work. 400Gbs should take a few hours to rebuild should a drive fall out of the RAID. Shake and DVD Studio Pro can be render and processor hogs- quickly spanning their scratch drives. Shake creates a separate flipbook (at least the previous versions did) as test renders of your compositing. Best media practices are generally your system and applications on your start up disk (duh), application scratches and prerenders on another, and your media clips on another. Running a mirrored RAID 5 is a happy in-between striping and mirroring.

If you can afford Shake, it is likely that you can afford another external drive for use as a scratch disk for your applications. It is just a suggestion.

I administrate a small audio studio, really basic kind of audio work. I have a few terabytes of media to manage. My NASs are all RAID5 and mirrored, that is the second NAS is an exact mirror of my primary file server. This setup has saved my ass on more than one occasion; add another level of redundancy in the fact that the workstations work with copies of the media before rewriting them to the primary server.

In any case, if you ever have to rebuild your mirrored raid, step aside and let it rebuild, don't work. 400Gbs should take a few hours to rebuild should a drive fall out of the RAID.

Keep your media paths clear (heck put a flow chart on your wall), don’t forget audio quality(good sound design), and by all means, if your creating your own movie- get the story done right in the first place. A good story will take you far. I still get goose bumps when I read Gilgamesh, and it was done in clay.

Cheers.

 

[Eniregnat]

Personally I would avoid RAIDs as much as possible. they sound good on paper but in practical use they can have many difficulties outside of server use.

Despite what I said above, RAIDS can be a pain in the ass, especily if they are the base of your livelyhood.

And in all of this, did you think of a UPS? Lastly, don't forget to reset Shake's and FCPs auto save/undo settings. They can take up good space.

Humm, I didn't answer your question. Stripeing is faster, but the first time your striped RAID goes down and you have to reload all of your media clips you will madder than a hatter and the Queen of Hearts put together.