Harddrive setup dilemma

[techster85]

Ok, I currently have a 250 gig (stock) boot drive, and a 320 gig capture scratch drive in my Mac Pro. For christmas it looks like i'm getting at least two 500 gig drives. While I could be happy with that and leave all four bays filled, I am pondering if it would be a speed boost to use a Raptor X 150 gig as my boot drive? If I do take this route, I will probably add another 500 gig to the set up and put both the 250 and the 320 into external enclosures.

So I guess my question is whether the raptor is worth the price for a speed bump? Is the speed bump actually noticeable compared to the stock 250 gig? Thanks.

 

[rob5]

Ok, I currently have a 250 gig (stock) boot drive, and a 320 gig capture scratch drive in my Mac Pro. For christmas it looks like i'm getting at least two 500 gig drives. While I could be happy with that and leave all four bays filled, I am pondering if it would be a speed boost to use a Raptor X 150 gig as my boot drive? If I do take this route, I will probably add another 500 gig to the set up and put both the 250 and the 320 into external enclosures.

So I guess my question is whether the raptor is worth the price for a speed bump? Is the speed bump actually noticeable compared to the stock 250 gig? Thanks.

i actually just ordered a Mac Pro with the 150GB raptor and 2x500GB drives. i can let you know how it is once I receive it

 

[ChrisA]

[I think a RAID made with two more more drives would be faster overall than a 10K RPM drive. THe 10K RPM drive is maybe 20% faster whilea striped RAID is nearly twice as fast.

 

[livingfortoday]

I'd say go for the Raptor, just 'cause then you'd only be taking up one drive slot versus two. Newegg has 'em on sale, btw, if that influences your decision at all :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136012

 

[techster85]

I'd say go for the Raptor, just 'cause then you'd only be taking up one drive slot versus two. Newegg has 'em on sale, btw, if that influences your decision at all :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136012

haha, yea that was actually the cause of the post haha. I saw that yesterday and started pondering the effects of such a drive. Yea, i would prefer to not stripe anything in the mac pro, just because its not worth wasting another drive bay for it.

 

[THX1139]

haha, yea that was actually the cause of the post haha. I saw that yesterday and started pondering the effects of such a drive. Yea, i would prefer to not stripe anything in the mac pro, just because its not worth wasting another drive bay for it.

"Wasting a drive bay"???? If you raid two drives you will gain about 25% speed over the Raptor PLUS the extra storage space. For the price of the Raptor, you could effectively get two 250 drives (or for a little bit more money go with 400's), raid them and get close to 500GB of storage that runs faster and quieter than the Raptor. If you are gaining so much in return, why do you consider it a waste? What are you planning to do with those other drive slots? Waste them with storage drives?

This is what I'd do:

Slot 1: One 400-500GB Sata for OS Boot. applications and storage.
Slot 2 and 3, Two 250GB Western digital RE drives for Raid0.
Slot 4: Stock 250 (or the 160) for Windows, or swap it out for a 500 storage drive if you don't do Windows.

Backup to an external firewire drive.

This setup will be faster, quieter and cooler than the Raptor (less click and fan noise), plus provide a lot of space for storage.

 

[techster85]

"Wasting a drive bay"???? If you raid two drives you will gain about 25% speed over the Raptor PLUS the extra storage space. For the price of the Raptor, you could effectively get two 250 drives (or for a little bit more money go with 400's), raid them and get close to 500GB of storage that runs faster and quieter than the Raptor. If you are gaining so much in return, why do you consider it a waste? What are you planning to do with those other drive slots? Waste them with storage drives?

This is what I'd do:

Slot 1: One 400-500GB Sata for OS Boot. applications and storage.
Slot 2 and 3, Two 250GB Western digital RE drives for Raid0.
Slot 4: Stock 250 (or the 160) for Windows, or swap it out for a 500 storage drive if you don't do Windows.

Backup to an external firewire drive.

This setup will be faster, quieter and cooler than the Raptor (less click and fan noise), plus provide a lot of space for storage.

Although the speed boost is tempting, I already have a server running Linus that has two 250 gig sata's on a mirror RAID setup. The biggest reason I would want the raptor is for my boot drive, so having the raid elsewhere would be useless to my intentions. Your setup would work great, but honestly, I need more space for my production companies' projects, so obviously I would use your system and upgrade the drives in size if that is how I choose to go. There was an article on one of these threads from macprojournal about raiding across all your drives and it sounded like a good idea, but I don't know if i like the idea of having my data across four drives because what if one drive fails? Maybe I'm not fully up on exactly how RAID works, but I think for now my fiance is forcing me to stick with the stock 250 boot and add three 500s if i want (turns out wedding videos don't bring in enough to finance our wedding and my computer modifications....darn...)

 

[dkoralek]

Although the speed boost is tempting, I already have a server running Linus that has two 250 gig sata's on a mirror RAID setup. The biggest reason I would want the raptor is for my boot drive, so having the raid elsewhere would be useless to my intentions. Your setup would work great, but honestly, I need more space for my production companies' projects, so obviously I would use your system and upgrade the drives in size if that is how I choose to go. There was an article on one of these threads from macprojournal about raiding across all your drives and it sounded like a good idea, but I don't know if i like the idea of having my data across four drives because what if one drive fails? Maybe I'm not fully up on exactly how RAID works, but I think for now my fiance is forcing me to stick with the stock 250 boot and add three 500s if i want (turns out wedding videos don't bring in enough to finance our wedding and my computer modifications....darn...)

The question I would ask is if you really need the extra speed on your boot drive? Seems that you would need the bigger speed boost on your data drives which you could raid and leave the stock hard disk as your system disk. The raptors have a tendency to be on the noisier side, and are certainly going to draw more power and give off more heat (increasing fan use, using more power...).

cheers.

 

[CanadaRAM]

RAID 0 = striping = speed boost under some types of use = 100% drive space (2 x 500 Gb drives = 1000 Gb space) = risky

RAID 1 = mirroring = redundancy, data security = 50% drive space (2 x 500 Gb drives = 500 Gb space)

 

[THX1139]

RAID 0 = striping = speed boost under some types of use = 100% drive space (2 x 500 Gb drives = 1000 Gb space) = risky

RAID 1 = mirroring = redundancy, data security = 50% drive space (2 x 500 Gb drives = 500 Gb space)

Here's the options using the internal drives slots. Fast, reliable, mass storage. Pick any two.

RAID 1 setup with 4, 500's is the probably the best way to go and gets you closest to having all three options; that is if you can afford the drives and can get by with "only" 1000GB of space. With this setup you would have speed and protection if any one of the drives fail. The only way you would lose data on drive failure is if two drives across the chain failed at at the exact same time. Highly unlikely. If it wasn't for needing/wanting a separate Windows boot drive, this would be my preferred setup. It would be FAST and reliable with adequate storage. What else does one need?

 

[Transeau]

Here is my $0.02

in trying every combination of my drives, I ended up with this as the fastest;

2x Raptor 150, RAID-0
2x 300GB 7200.9, RAID-0

I use the system for many things, FCS, Logic, Paralles, and general usage.
The Raptors in a RAID-0 is the fastest, in my opinion, for a boot drive. There is one catch though. They are LOUD when working together. I have a two year old running around all the time, so the noise doesn't bother me at all.

 

[techster85]

I am leaning towards striping my boot drive with another 250 gig, and then putting 500s in the other two spaces for a media drive and a capture scratch drive also, then I use my server as an archive space. I think that would work out best, but that is all assuming that i don't randomly decide to install windows...