Mac Pro Hard Drive

[TornadoTed]

Hello,

I'm totally new to Macs as I've been beating my head against PC's for years!

I run a recording studio and have just shelled out for a Mac Pro.

Can anyone recommend the best solution for audio hard drives?

I've been running a Western Digital Raptor on my PC and could get 70-80 tracks at 24/44.1 before the processor gave up but I would like to move to 24/96 and run anywhere up to 50 tracks.

Would a Western Digital Raptor give me this many tracks or would I need to use a RAID system?

In a RAID system can that be done without any other hardware other than drives?

Cheers for you help now and in the future...Ted

 

[crazzyeddie]

I would say use a RAID0. They are not that expensive anymore and a site like NewEgg has a 500GB Seagate SATA drive for about $150 (link).

The Disk Utility in Mac OS X can make you a RAID with no additional hardware.

 

[TornadoTed]

So it's as simple as adding 2-3 drives in the spare slots and setting it up in a Disk Utility programme from within the OS? No need to re-install the OS or anything like that?

 

[TornadoTed]

This be ok for less money, I don't need 1-1.5 Tb?

http://www.dacomputers.com/store.php?targetcode=Z29850C

 

[CanadaRAM]

How many tracks depends on the software you are using, and the plugins you have loaded etc. etc. as well as the hard driev speed and the processor speed and having enough memory. It is not down to a single component, in other words.

RAID 0 is an excellent way to lose all of your data if you have an error on any one drive. In most operating environments, you do NOT get a speed improvement from RAID 0

You are better off with using multiple drives to separate the System drive from the application drive from the data drive. Alsp, the perpendicular-recording 7200 ROM 400 Gb drives are as fast as the Raptors, quieter and cheaper.

 

[liquidtrance123]

Is it possible on the Mac Pro to setup 2 RAID arrays? Say a 2x drive Raptor RAID 0 array and a 2x 500gb RAID 1 array for storage/backups?

 

[robbieduncan]

Is it possible on the Mac Pro to setup 2 RAID arrays? Say a 2x drive Raptor RAID 0 array and a 2x 500gb RAID 1 array for storage/backups?

Yes. You can setup any combination of RAID arrays you like via the software. You need to be aware that it's all software though: there is no hardware RAID controller so you may not see the throughput you expect.

You can even setup a RAID or RAID arrays, so you could create two identical RAID 0 arrays then create a single RAID 1 array from those!