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Mac Pro 2010 - Set up for video editing, graphics etc..

S

steveOooo

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 30, 2008
743
89
UK
I have a mac pro 2010 coming soon. Will be using mostly

FCP 7
Motion 4
Adobe - After FX (practicing / playing as new to it)
Illustrator, PS

Getting it primarily because i want faster render times than my MBP and to actually create stuff in motion without 'guessing' due to sluggishness.

Would like to set up a internal raid, What do you suggest? 3 x 2TB drives for the raid (with 2x 3 TB cheap USB drives to back up media files as and when a fair new chunk has arrived). and one drive for the main system - 2 tb for this too?

Will any old harddrives do? Im going to get a UPS (cheaper than the raid card) which must hold the mac pro, hp monitor and a bit more for any usb drives etc going for a bit just incase (using at home).

Also, the MP is a refurb, will it come with snow leopard / lion - if lion, can i downgrade to SL (as i head Adobe Master Collection CS5 doesnt work).

Anything else i should be aware with? advice for a MP newbie

Also, in say 3 years time - would current graphics cards and faster processor (say a Hex Core over 3.33Ghz) work in the MP or am i limited to whats out there now (ie future stuff will not work?)
 
Can you share some specs? For the HDD setup, I would suggest 3TB drives if you plan on storing lots of HD video. 2TB drives fill up pretty quick and if you plan on doing RAID you would benefit from that extra 50%. I have a 2TB 7,200 RPM system drive BTO from Apple and it works great.
 
DeeEss said:
CS5 Master Collection works fine for me on Lion.
Click to expand...

Cough mine has a small crack ;) in it

I heard 3tb drives were too big / slow as there bugger- I thought each drive / drive slot could take no more than 2tb so effectively I have 12tb of storage ? Happy days! Though, not when it comes to the point where your drives at full and u go to archive

Ive only dabbled a little bit with raid with the gtech. G raid - essentially will be doing a lot of multicam of reality / lifestyle how tv prog and live event editing

Spec is the base SP model (refurb) 2.8 QC

Also, will the ram I buy now with the QC processor still work if / when I upgrade the processor to a hex core in 2-3 years time?
 
^^^

I'm using the equivalent from Seagate and they work great, just plug and play (and format of course). Not sure about UK prices.
 
also, what would happen if i partition say 40GB for a windows XP partition? would this work ? (as theres issues going over 2.2TB on windows i think)
 
steveOooo said:
I prefer Seagate to WD

Is it this model

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005680H...de=asn&creative=22218&creativeASIN=B005680H1I

I'll probably use 2tb until the prices have dropped a bit
Click to expand...
Seagate's reliability has gone down the toilet since ~2008. For example, the current 7200.12 series has over a 30% failure rate OTB. :eek:

As a general rule, I usually recommend WD instead, but ATM, they don't sell a 7200 rpm 3TB consumer disk (i.e. Caviar Black). It's Green or nothing from WD (they don't even have 3TB in an RE4).

The Hitachi H3IK30003272SW is 3TB @ 7200rpm, but it's another brand I recommend you avoid (afterall, the Deskstar series are also know as Deathstars :eek:).

If possible, skip 3TB, or wait for a disk from a better vendor to come along IMO.

Just a couple of thoughts before you leap anyway. :)
 
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theres probably not a perfect manufacturer - i think there all cutting corners in manufacturer to make em cheap for the masses.

i have a few WD studio FW800 2tb drives which have started to randomly not start (power issues id say).

I think i sided with Seagate purely through the perception from using some external drives, lacie, for example are a brand i would avoid like the plague.

Suggestions? id rather side with £40-£50 2tb drives than £120 3tb drives
 
steveOooo said:
theres probably not a perfect manufacturer - i think there all cutting corners in manufacturer to make em cheap for the masses.

i have a few WD studio FW800 2tb drives which have started to randomly not start (power issues id say).

I think i sided with Seagate purely through the perception from using some external drives, lacie, for example are a brand i would avoid like the plague.

Suggestions? id rather side with £40-£50 2tb drives than £120 3tb drives
Click to expand...
Externals tend to be less reliable, as there's a SATA to USB or FW800 bridge in the mix. Combine this with cheap PSU's (wall worts), and it makes it worse. Even if that same disk was installed internally on a SATA port. Disks used may not be the best quality the disk maker offers either.

Better to stick with 2TB or less capacity disks due to the better cost/GB ratio, and put it on an internal SATA port (not sure if you have room for additional internals or not).
 
with the 'green' 3tb Wd drive

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Caviar-Cache-Internal/dp/B004RORMF6/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

with its variable RPM (5400-7200) would this not be suitable as part of a 3 drive raid for editing in FCP? Or would it make no difference?

Or, perhaps have one of these as the main boot drive, with 3x non green drives (at 7200rpm)

I have a Graid which i can use whilst i transfer to mac pro and build up the drives, ram etc..and finally get rid of the dodgy WD FW Studio drives!
 
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if it's a refurb, it will ship with Lion. Pre-installed, no dvd and no SL DVD included.
 
steveOooo said:
can i install SL via a upgrade SL disc i paid for 2 years ago?
Click to expand...

You can install SL but you'll need a disc with 10.6.4 (2010) special build or 10.6.5+ to boot it with Disc. There are ways around that though. You could build up a 10.6.5+ image on another mac that CAN boot 10.6 retail disc and patch it then image that over to the new Mac Pro and combo patch to 10.6.8. That's what I would do. I think i've even done it using a Macbook as original source with no problems. Make sure you combo patch to 10.6.8 after you have migrated everything over to the final Mac Pro. Tends to sew up any driver disagreements etc.
 
What if I put a completely blank drive in, or is the mp hard coded o only accept 10.6.4 / .5 and over?

Hmmm think I'll clone my Mbp, then go back to 10.6 then up it to 10.6.5 and then, using migration assistant, transfer to mac?
 
steveOooo said:
What if I put a completely blank drive in, or is the mp hard coded o only accept 10.6.4 / .5 and over?

Hmmm think I'll clone my Mbp, then go back to 10.6 then up it to 10.6.5 and then, using migration assistant, transfer to mac?
Click to expand...

You can't just put retail 10.6 on a blank drive cause you would have no way to boot for install or after to patch to 10.6.8.

That should work with migration assistant. Never used it for OS and system folders but it may even suss out the change of HW. Like not showing you the trackpad pref pane etc.
But if you are going to clone MBP you may want to just bare metal image the Mac Pro and then just re-apply combo and see if it works smoothly. I know it will at least boot as I boot MPro's with laptop images all the time. You can always go through those extra "downgrade" steps if for some reason it does not work out the HW change. Might save some time. Either way one of those methods should work.
 
I hear the wd 3tb green drives are not compatible with boot camp?is this the entire 3tb or could I bootcamp a 32gb partition?

Think my drive set up will be

Wd green 3tb - boot / main - 3tb USB / fw 800 for clone / backup

3 x 2tb wd black cavalier as raid 0 / 3x 2tb USB drives for back up of media files

If I start with 2 x 2 tb wd drives
As a raid, can I add a third drive later down the line? It or should I treat all 3 drives as one and install all 3 in one go?
 
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steveOooo said:
I hear the wd 3tb green drives are not compatible with boot camp?
Click to expand...
:confused: This is nonsense.

It may need to be partitioned (for a 32 bit OS = can't handle greater than 2.2TB volumes). This wouldn't be a problem hardware wise (EFI firmware is capable of handling volumes greater than 2.2TB <64 bit from 2008 on>), and if the OS is 64 bit, such as Win7-64.

steveOooo said:
If I start with 2 x 2 tb wd drives
As a raid, can I add a third drive later down the line? It or should I treat all 3 drives as one and install all 3 in one go?
Click to expand...
To increase the capacity in an existing software based RAID volume, you will loose all existing data during the initialization process.

So you'll have to back it all up first, add the additional drive, create the new RAID set (wipe original set, then initialize the new one), and finally restore your data from the backup you made.

What you're hoping to do is called Online Expansion, and pretty much every software implementation cannot do it (including Disk Utility). You'd need a hardware based RAID card for that, which would set you back ~$300 - 350 just for a 4 port card (and they can go up to 24 ports, which typically sell for over $1200).
 
steveOooo said:
I hear the wd 3tb green drives are not compatible with boot camp?
Click to expand...

They are not natively compatible with Win XP but you can align them with a utility. PITA and OS X, Vista, and Win 7 don't need it. Has to do with WD advanced format block writing.
I would not get the 3TB's anyway, 4-platters, high death rate and very noisy compared to 2TB Greens. The WD20EARS 2TB version is 3 platters and way quieter, if that is your thing. It is mine at this point.
 
derbothaus said:
They are not natively compatible with Win XP but you can align them with a utility. PITA and OS X, Vista, and Win 7 don't need it. Has to do with WD advanced format block writing.
I would not get the 3TB's anyway, 4-platters, high death rate and very noisy compared to 2TB Greens. The WD20EARS 2TB version is 3 platters and way quieter, if that is your thing. It is mine at this point.
Click to expand...

would they work with a small 32gb xp partition on my mac boot disc?

also, would having 3 of them as a raid cause problems or just stick to wd black cavilar normal 7200 rpm drives for raid?
 
steveOooo said:
would they work with a small 32gb xp partition on my mac boot disc?

also, would having 3 of them as a raid cause problems or just stick to wd black cavilar normal 7200 rpm drives for raid?
Click to expand...
Greens, no matter the size, aren't meant for RAID use (can't take the wear and tear, and the power management doesn't help either <lots of additional spinup/down increases the wear>).

Better to stick with 7200rpm drives (Caviar Blacks would be best, as they're more reliable than other brands; 5 yr warranty and better platters).
 
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