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Dual drives in iMac

M

maskedscientist

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 8, 2009
16
0
So here is my scenario: just bought the new 27" iMac.

I am in a position where I can put my OWN hard drive into the imac, without voiding the warranty. But that's not what I'm posting for.


This iMac is replacing my old Mac Pro. With my mac pro, I have 2 hard drives inserted. Bay 1 contains my boot drive, Bay 2 is my Time machine Drive.

Time machine is much more efficient when you can achieve a SATA connection. The data is transferred faster, and the restores are much faster. No more waiting for the time machine windows to load off FW800.

Essentially, what I want to do on my iMac is buy some sort of adapter, that goes into the drive bay. I'd like this adapter to hold two 2.5" SATA drives. The first would be my boot disk, and the second, my backup. any ideas?
 
How often are you restoring stuff?!?!?

The only way you'll get two hard drives to physically fit within an iMac would be to remove the DVD drive ... in which case you won't need any adapter.

It's much easier (and more sensible) to just put the second drive into an external case and plug it in using FireWire.
 
Really? I havent seen that same same kind of performance hit with TM and even slow ass USB 2. At least from what I remember, since it sucked so bad I just gave up on it.

And I would never restore from a TM backup, cause that just takes too long, its too inefficient.

I keep a regular bootable backup using SuperDuper, 1000X more useful than a TM restore.

One thing you could do is disconnect the optical drive and run a cable out the slot to an eSATA drive.

Like what this guy did with his mini server edition and a RAID 5 box: http://www.diatomdesign.com/images/serverraid.jpg

Do you really need TM backups? I mean the whole version by version by version by version thing? How about just a regular incremental backup like SuperDuper provides? I run mine 2X a day, once at lunch and once at night. Worst case scenario is 1/2 days work lost.
 
Badger^2 said:
Really? I havent seen that same same kind of performance hit with TM and even slow ass USB 2. At least from what I remember, since it sucked so bad I just gave up on it.

And I would never restore from a TM backup, cause that just takes too long, its too inefficient.

I keep a regular bootable backup using SuperDuper, 1000X more useful than a TM restore.

One thing you could do is disconnect the optical drive and run a cable out the slot to an eSATA drive.

Like what this guy did with his mini server edition and a RAID 5 box: http://www.diatomdesign.com/images/serverraid.jpg

Do you really need TM backups? I mean the whole version by version by version by version thing? How about just a regular incremental backup like SuperDuper provides? I run mine 2X a day, once at lunch and once at night. Worst case scenario is 1/2 days work lost.
Click to expand...

Regardless of my backup method, I still want to have my backup drive on SATA. It's significantly faster. Significantly.

Maybe somehow put in two 2.5 inch drives, on top of each other?

Most adapters that use this require a SATA connection for each drive. I'm looking for a solution that shares the sata connection to both drives.
 
maskedscientist said:
And I prefer carbon copy cloner over SuperDuper
Click to expand...

6 of one, 1/2 dozen of another. :)

Whatever "sled" you use is going to have to have some sort of port multiplier -- since SATA is a 1 drive for 1 bus kind of connection.

You kinda take 1 step forward with the dual drives, but then 2 steps back because they are 2.5" laptop drives with slower transfer rates than a 3.5" drive.

We all know that SATA is faster than FW800, but even if you created, lets say 5 gigs of *new* data every single day you work, a one time backup via FW800 might take, what, like 3 minutes? And 2 minutes via a SATA connection?

And what about the days where you only do 100 megs of new files? 5 seconds?

I guess I just dont see how small backup files like TM creates could have that kind of effect on speed?

And you have ruled out the eSATA option? Just running a cable out the side? I mean theres no speed hit, eSATA = SATA.

Oh, and yes, I misread the post on that mini setup. Its a normal mini and the person put in a dual drive interface board from a mini server. Maybe thats what you need for your iMac?
 
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