HDD setup

[gxgn]

Hello, I am looking for your advice on how to setup my hard drives the best for performance and safety. I run a 2.8 quad 2011, 16gb. Primary use is photography (LR mostly) and just starting into video editing.

Up to now I used 3 drives, 1TB WD Black and 2 x 2TB WD Black. Today I just got a 3TB Hitachi.

Drive 1, the 1 TB, is my boot, programs, pictures. I know it's stupid I saved the images on the boot drive. I just need to figure out how to move them without messing up the links in LR.

Drive 2, a 2 TB, is split in a 200GB scratch disk and a 1.8TB unused.
Drive 3, a 2TB, is not split and it's used a duplicate for my import files in LR.
Drive 4, the new 3TB is intended to be used for Time machine and other data backup.

I know this setup is far from optimal and I would really appreciate if someone can help on how to configure all these drives and how to use them for speed and backup. If possible please also indicate any details you can when you talk about scratch disk, journaled vs not etc - I'm just a novice.

Thank you,
G

 

[teleromeo]

I just need to figure out how to move them without messing up the links in LR.

You'll have to do the move in lightroom, not in finder to preserve the links. I believe you have to hold the command key while you drag the files or folders to their new location. Do some testing with dummy files before you move everything to a new location.

 

[Seo]

You can go ahead and move the directory that contains the files, and "Find Missing Files" within Lightroom. It's smart, and will find all the missing links.

As for your drives you can keep using the 1TB as a boot, but I would partition off the 100GB you actually need for your boot drive (don't keep anything other than the system and apps on this partition). This allows you to use the rest for extra storage without slowing down access to your boot data. Scratch data also goes here.

I would partition 1TB or so off each of those 2TB drives, then setup a RAID 0 with those two 1TB partitions to create a Master data volume. Keep your working data i.e. pictures, videos, project files, etc. here.

Use the slower two 1TB partitions (that would be the second one in the list) to create a RAID 0 (or RAID 1, depending) for an Archive volume.

Use your 3TB for Time Machine.

All these should be formatted HFS+ Journaled. This kind of setup gives you the best performance and data safety you can get with what you have, and makes it easy to recover and expand when you eventually need to. I use a similar setup myself, just with more drives.

 

[gxgn]

Thank you Seo.

Just to make sure I understand, the scratch disk goes into the .9GB partition left in drive 1? It doesn't need a dedicated partition?

Shouldn't the 1+1 TB fast raid 0 be formatted non journaled to allow for higher speeds?

Lastly, what partition would you use to save the Lightroom catalog?

Best regards,
george

 

[Seo]

Scratch goes with the boot partition to prevent disk contention. No separate partition is necessary; I would only make one so that it's easier for me to manually purge the cache.

The performance hit of journaling is not significant, however if you still can reformat the drives, yes non-journaled will be slightly faster.

Lightroom catalogs go in the Master volume.