Hard Drive Config

[stickman.walks]

Mac Pro 6 Core, 3.33Ghz, 12gb ram, 4x2tb Western Digital Black Cav internal drives, 1 500gb western digital external drive, 1x2tb external drive.

Looking to maximize performance with my drive set-up, and open to suggestions.

This is my set-up and why...

HD 1 (WD BLK CAV 2TB internal): Main drive for OS X, Apps, and personal music, photos, documents, videos, etc.

HD 2 (WD BLK CAV 2TB internal): Time Machine back-up for HD 1/3/4.

HD 3 (WD BLK CAV 2TB internal): Photo files (professional/important).

HD 4 (WD BLK CAV 2TB internal): Music documents (professional/important).

HD 5 (TOSH 2TB external): not used currently,

HD 6 (WD 500GB external): exact copy of iTunes files for music library in HD 1.


Just curious if there is anything I could/should do that is common sense to some of you out there, or that would give me the best performance possible.

Thanks.

 

[ActionableMango]

HD 2 (WD BLK CAV 2TB internal): Time Machine back-up for HD 1/3/4.

I'm a bit confused how a single 2TB drive will be used to back up three 2TB drives. Granted, it will work provided you greatly under-utilize all three of those drives.

 

[stickman.walks]

i understand your head scratching. it`s simply because, as you mentioned, at present ALL of my hdd`s are very low in relative used space. so everything fits quite nicely.

but you think this is about the best i can do with what i have? i prefer to have an hdd dedicated to each are (1 for photo files, 1 for music docs).

in the future, when these drives get closer to being full, what would you suggest for backups?

 

[dknightd]

I'd at least use 5 to backup 3 and 4. Ideally you should have at least two backups of anything you think is important. When 3 and 4 no longer fit on 5, get another disk.

 

[ActionableMango]

Well if you have crucial files, it's kind of lame to back them up to another internal drive. If someone steals the computer or it catches fire or something, all is lost. Best for your backup drive to be external and keep it in a fire safe. Even better to keep it off site.

 

[MrLatte23]

Stripped down Boot drive...

I adhere to the theory that your boot drive is always running and is thus mostly likely to fail first, so I went with a 120 GB SSD and keep all photos, music, video elsewhere. This limits my boot drive back-up size/time. I do keep simple private things like invoices, word and excel docs on it, but definitely nothing that would tax the system to playback like video.

I'm not a fan of Time Machine as it's screwed with my data more than once so I used Carbon Copy Cloner. I partition my HD's for an internal and external back up of my boot drive (120 GB) time-shifted so that if something goes amuck, I can reboot and recover to 12 hours ago, missing a few emails. I also partition my back up HD's to match the partitioning sizes on my day-to-day use HD's and name them accordingly.

 

[mjsmke]

Depending on what you do a scratch disc is worth having. I use a WD640GB black as a scartch for video and photoshop. And i have a 120GB partitian as a clone for my boot drive.

I also keep an external clone of my boot drive kept in another loocation. All my time machine backups are external for 3 reasons.

1. what if my computer is stolen.
2. what if there is a fire.
3. major power surge. (i already have a surge protection unit, but you never know...)