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Mac Mini RAID SSD's with a difference?

C

Cwoody100

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 26, 2008
2
0
Hi All,

So I picked up a Mac Mini 2012 Cheap the other day, its got a nice Quad Core and 8GB RAM in it but I want to upgrade its HDD to twin SSDs.

Currently it has a 1TB in the upper position, apparently this is odd reading the forums, means I have to look harder for a lower SATA Ribbon cable.

Anyways, what I want to do is put a 240GB SSD and a 480GB SSD in it, then partition the 480 in half so Im left with two 240GB partitions. I then want to set up a RAID with the original 240GB SSD and one of the 240GB partitions on the 480GB SSD. This should leave me with a blazing fast 480 partition and a second 240 partition. What I want to know is will this work?

The reason is I already have a 480GB SSD just laying around at home, its SATA3. If i was to buy a cheaper 240GB SSD, would my money be wasted? I just don't wanna shell out for another 480GB SSD.

This might all seem a waste but I want the 900mbs speeds for working on large Photoshops, Video Editing in FCPX and also large CAD files.

Thanks guys.
 
Cwoody100 said:
Anyways, what I want to do is put a 240GB SSD and a 480GB SSD in it, then partition the 480 in half so Im left with two 240GB partitions. I then want to set up a RAID with the original 240GB SSD and one of the 240GB partitions on the 480GB SSD. This should leave me with a blazing fast 480 partition and a second 240 partition. What I want to know is will this work?
Click to expand...


1 question - why partition a 480Gb drive in to two 240Gb then raid one partition with the other drive?

Can see no reason for you to do this, I upgraded my Mac Mini and added an SSD, Mavericks is on that, and my user directories are on the original apple HDD, and my mini is blazing quick.
 
Cwoody100 said:
Hi All,

So I picked up a Mac Mini 2012 Cheap the other day, its got a nice Quad Core and 8GB RAM in it but I want to upgrade its HDD to twin SSDs.

Currently it has a 1TB in the upper position, apparently this is odd reading the forums, means I have to look harder for a lower SATA Ribbon cable.

Anyways, what I want to do is put a 240GB SSD and a 480GB SSD in it, then partition the 480 in half so Im left with two 240GB partitions. I then want to set up a RAID with the original 240GB SSD and one of the 240GB partitions on the 480GB SSD. This should leave me with a blazing fast 480 partition and a second 240 partition. What I want to know is will this work?

The reason is I already have a 480GB SSD just laying around at home, its SATA3. If i was to buy a cheaper 240GB SSD, would my money be wasted? I just don't wanna shell out for another 480GB SSD.

This might all seem a waste but I want the 900mbs speeds for working on large Photoshops, Video Editing in FCPX and also large CAD files.

Thanks guys.
Click to expand...

Don't think so. IMO RAID takes the whole drive.
 
Yes ... that will work, although you should have matched performance SSDs (same brand, model) to ensure the RAID-0 section will work efficiently.

As to why do this? ... I have built such a configuration in order to have OS X (RAID-0 for speed) and Windows on only 2 physical drives. I used Samsung 840 Pro drives in 512GB and 256GB sizes. This gave me a 512GB RAID-0 bootable OS X and a 256GB bootable Windows, and only used 2 drive slots in my Mac Pro.

I also had that configuration in my Mac Mini for awhile ... but have since made the Mini into a media server and no longer need to run Windows on it. Worked fine!


Good Luck ... and post your experience doing this.

-howard
 
It should work.

I made a 1T partition from my 4T HDD, and then RAID it with another two 1T HDD to achieve a 3T RAID 0 partition.

Even though all these 3 HDD have different performance, the RAID 0 speed simply equals to all 3 HDD's totally speed (e.g. HDD A 60MB/s, HDD B 80MB/s, and HDD C 120MB/s, BlackMagic show's that the RAID 0 speed = 260MB/s).

The same rule should applicable to SSD.
 
iBarça-Boy said:
Idd you cannot make a raid out of a partition...
Click to expand...
You can definitely do it, though you may have to create the RAID via Terminal commands to get it just right.

The question is why though; the problem is that the second partition of the 480gb drive will be a performance drain for the RAID set any time it's being used; if that partition is intended for your operating system then this may be especially bad. If it's for something like a Bootcamp partition that won't be used while the software RAID is in use, then there's not so much of an issue.

Also, why do you feel you need this? What are you doing that the speed of a single good SSD isn't enough? You're adding complexity, and reducing redundancy. For example, if it is a files and OS setup then you're better just allocating the bigger SSD for files, and the smaller for OS, as that way if one fails you only need to replace and restore data for a single; i.e - if the files drive fails you still have a bootable system if you have a user account on the OS drive, or if the OS drive fails then you still have your files. With the RAID arrangement if you lose the bigger SSD then you lose both volumes.
 
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iBarça-Boy said:
Idd you cannot make a raid out of a partition...
Click to expand...

Yes you can, I even made RAID array from partitions on target mode attached drives.

14433612700_7566c95ef9_b.jpg
 
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drsox said:
Interesting. Does it work for USB attached drives ?
Click to expand...

It should, a few years ago using apple software raid and a 4 port USB Hub I raided 4 USB pen drives, this was done just to see if it would work and because I was bored, the results weren't spectacular but it did work.
 
jbarley said:
It should, a few years ago using apple software raid and a 4 port USB Hub I raided 4 USB pen drives, this was done just to see if it would work and because I was bored, the results weren't spectacular but it did work.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I have 2 HiSpeed USB3 enclosures with 256GB Evos in. Worth trying to see what's possible. I can get 410/410 with just one.

UPDATE :

Yes, I can create the RAID but I can't use it as a boot drive, so a waste of time for me.
It shows as 625/525, so a bit faster.
 
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