Mac Pro, what's your storage arrangement

[Tesselator]

Mine was this:

Volumes in this configuration are relatively the same
speed as a fast SSD but of course 6TB each. ​

but now is this:

Volumes configured like this are almost the same speed
as a 2-drive SSD RAID0 set - but with the "4K file I/O"
of about the same speed as a single fast SSD drive.

Here the Time_Machine RAID0 set is temporarily disconnected.
​

All ST3000DM001 Seagate Barracuda 3TB (1TB per/platter, 3-Platter, 7200rpm, SATA 6Gbit/s) drives configured in various RAID 0 sets.

 

[odinsride]

A bit surprised not to see DIY fusion drives yet.

I'm planning to set one up this weekend and reinstall ML. My friend did this with his Mac Pro and had great results.

 

[fiatlux]

240GB SSD for OS/Apps/~/Library
2TB Raid 0 stripe for /User/data
2TB Time machine for internal drives

Mine is fairly similar:

80GB SSD for OS/Apps/Lightroom catalog (about time to switch to a larger SSD)
2TB Raid 0 stripe for ~/ (2 x 1TB)
2TB Time Machine for data stripe backup
750GB with movies being cloned to an external disk attached to a hacked AppleTV

PCI-E eSATA card + eSATA dock to clone internal disks on spare HDDs at regular intervals.

and... a BluRay burner as optical drive, of course!

----------

A bit surprised not to see DIY fusion drives yet.

Not an option for me as this would require Mountain Lion, but no everybody is convinced of the benefits of fusion drives (apart from ease of use of course): http://macperformanceguide.com/macmini2012-dual-drives-vs-fusion.html

I can understand that you would want a "set-it and forget-it" approach on a Mac Mini or iMac, but I'd rather use the flexibility offered by the Mac Pro for a tailored solution.

 

[mattlong1978]

Mine go something like this

This is my current setup, I think the only change I would make is to change the 256GB SSD to the OS drive and install a 512GB SSD for steam.

Bay 1 Crucial C300 128GB SSD (Shared OS X/Windows 7 Bootcamp)
Bay 2 Crucial C300 256GB SSD (Steam Game Drive)
Bay 3 Seagate 3TB Barracuda HDD (User DIrectory inc. Movies, Music Documents etc.)
Bay 4 (Empty)

External

LaCie 2big Quadra 4TB (Time Machine)
WD My Passport 1TB (Portable Media Files)

 

[mluters]

Internal:

2 Intel 520 SSD 240gb in Raid 0 - OS X and apps
1 4TB Hitachi - time machine
1 4TB Hitachi - time machine for 5 other macs
1 500gb WD - BU of SSD Raid 0
1 2TB WD RE4 - Hot spare for Raid 5

External: Cineraid CR-T08E enclosure and Areca 1882IX-12

8 2TB WD RE4 in raid 5 = 14TB total
Aperture - Photos
Final Cut Pro - Videos
iTunes - Movies/Music

 

[Lil Chillbil]

160gb SSD For my os and Apps
and 3 Western digital green drives in the other ports each 3 terabytes

 

[DPUser]

OSX and Apps on 120 gb Intel 330
Scratch Disc 120 gb Intel 330
Sample Data for virtual instruments on two 240 gb Intel 330s
Backup OS (clone), project, and Sample Data on two 2 tb 7.2k Seagates
Spare 1 tb WD Green
Time Machine on two external 3 tb Seagates, rotated on and off site.

 

[goodcow]

Internal:
1TB - OS X
2.25TB - RAID-0 split over three drives for HD uncompressed capturing

External:
500GB - Time Capsule
16TB - DroboPro
4TB - Drobo Gen. 2

 

[Killerbob]

Does your NAS have dual Gigabit Ethernet ports and support 802.11ad? If so, then you can get a router that supports 802.11ad and utilise the two GbE ports on the Mac Pro. Such a wired solution will give you very good transfer rates (around 180 MB/s with a Synology DS1511+)

I have a ReadyNAS Pro Pioneer, with 2xGigaBit ports. One is connected to my TC, but you're saying I could connect the other one to the 2nd ethernet on the Mac Pro? How would I set that up?

----------

I have the following:

Internal:

Bay 1 - 250GB C300 SSD - for Bootcamp Windows 7
Bay 2 - 1TB Samsung - disc 1 in Raid0
Bay 3 - 1TB Samsung - disc 2 in Raid0 - for Temp. Data
Bay 4 - 500GB Samsung - for Stuff

960GB Accelsior card for OSX, Apps., and Aperture DB

External:

ReadyNAS Pro Pioneer, 6x3TB - for Data
ReadyNAS Ultra 2, 2x3TB & 2x1TB - for Backup NAS
3TB TimeCapsule - for MP, MBPs, and MBAs Backups
1TB TimeCapsule - for External sharing

 

[yoak]

Does your NAS have dual Gigabit Ethernet ports and support 802.11ad? If so, then you can get a router that supports 802.11ad and utilise the two GbE ports on the Mac Pro. Such a wired solution will give you very good transfer rates (around 180 MB/s with a Synology DS1511+)

The NAS has dual ports. Not sure if it supports 802.11ad.
I had it hooked up directly the first time and got good transfer speed (not sure how fast), but then I couldn´t connect to it with the rest of our stuff.

If this work I´ll be a happy camper. I have even laid down the ethernet cable, so I could just plug it in. I have an Airport Extreme

EDIT: I can´t seem to find out it´s wifi specs, but it says this about Network:
Fully Managed 2 x 10/100/1000 Link aggregation and failover

 

[-hh]

Internal:

PCIe .. 256GB SSD (Accelsior) - Boot Drive
2* 4TB RAID 0- Data Repository
2* 2TB RAID 1 - Time Machine (internal)
Optical 1 - OEM DVD/CD Burner
Optical 2 - 2.5" 256GB HDD - Clone of SSD (Boot Drive)

External:

USB - 3TB External HDD - Time Machine (external)
x2 instances (one instance off-site)

FW800 - 1TB {unpackaged} HDD - Cloned data backups
x2 instances (one instance off-site)

FW800 - 2*1TB RAID1 ... data archive repository (to be recycled soon)
FW800 - 2*2TB RAID1 ... data archive repository (to be recycled soon)

Synology NAS (single bay) ... currently down ( Seagate warranty replacement HDD incompatibility that needs to get sorted out)


-hh

 

[theSeb]

The NAS has dual ports. Not sure if it supports 802.11ad.
I had it hooked up directly the first time and got good transfer speed (not sure how fast), but then I couldn´t connect to it with the rest of our stuff.

If this work I´ll be a happy camper. I have even laid down the ethernet cable, so I could just plug it in. I have an Airport Extreme

EDIT: I can´t seem to find out it´s wifi specs, but it says this about Network:
Fully Managed 2 x 10/100/1000 Link aggregation and failover

Oops, I actually meant 802.3ad - Link Aggregation is the same thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_aggregation

Unfortunately the Airport Extreme does not support 802.3ad. You will need to buy a "smart" switch that does and connect it into your existing network.

Here is a basic Netgear one that supports link aggregation.

http://www.netgear.co.uk/business/products/switches/smart-switches/smart-switches/gs108t.aspx#one

Then it's just a matter of connecting two Ethernet cables from the switch to the NAS and setting up link aggregation on your NAS and on the switch. Then connect two cables from the Mac Pro to the switch and set up link aggregation in the Mac Pro's network utility.

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH4156

Obviously the switch needs to also be connected to your existing router so that your Mac Pro can continue to access the internet.

----------

I have a ReadyNAS Pro Pioneer, with 2xGigaBit ports. One is connected to my TC, but you're saying I could connect the other one to the 2nd ethernet on the Mac Pro? How would I set that up?

My post above explains how to do this.

 

[i make movies]

Bays 1-4 = 4 x 3TB Ultrastars in a RAID0, using SoftRAID.

I disconnected the optical drive (but left it in place). in the upper bay, I have OWC 6g 480GB for OS and programs and the 1 TB that came with the tower as Time Machine Backup for the SSD.

 

[yoak]

Oops, I actually meant 802.3ad - Link Aggregation is the same thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_aggregation

Unfortunately the Airport Extreme does not support 802.3ad. You will need to buy a "smart" switch that does and connect it into your existing network.

Here is a basic Netgear one that supports link aggregation.

http://www.netgear.co.uk/business/products/switches/smart-switches/smart-switches/gs108t.aspx#one

Then it's just a matter of connecting two Ethernet cables from the switch to the NAS and setting up link aggregation on your NAS and on the switch. Then connect two cables from the Mac Pro to the switch and set up link aggregation in the Mac Pro's network utility.

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH4156

Obviously the switch needs to also be connected to your existing router so that your Mac Pro can continue to access the internet.

----------



My post above explains how to do this.

theSeb, you are the man (or woman)!
Thank you very much for your detailed information. I will definitely look into this.
My MP dosen´t have a wifi card so at the moment it shares my MBP conniption.
This will solve this problem too I guess.

 

[Killerbob]

I looked into Teamed connections, and it requires a NAS and a Switch that both cupport this. Unfortunately it seems the ReadyNAS Pro Pioneer does not, and even though there is a custommade add-on to enable this, it is not official. Also, not all Switches support this.

It looks like the dog bollocks, but won't work for me for now

 

[yoak]

I looked into Teamed connections, and it requires a NAS and a Switch that both cupport this. Unfortunately it seems the ReadyNAS Pro Pioneer does not, and even though there is a custommade add-on to enable this, it is not official. Also, not all Switches support this.

It looks like the dog bollocks, but won't work for me for now

Is it the same for the Pioneer and Pro6? I couldn´t figure it out

 

[Tesselator]

My post above explains how to do this.

Nice tip Seb!

That reminded me to hook mine back up!

Coolness!

Thanks!

 

[firedownunder]

See sig.

 

[macmesser]

My setup:

Internal:
250 GB SSD system drive
128GB SSD scratch disk
500 GB WDC data drive
2TB WD Green Time Machine drive w/680GB and 1.32TB partitions

External:
eSATA II enclosure with 2 Seagate Barracuda 3TB, 1X2TB WD Green

 

[derbothaus]

Pretty simple:
240GB Intel 520 - boot.
600GB WD6000HLHX Raptor w/ symlink Home files.
2TB WD20EARS Green 32MB - Backups/ Media

1x 750 WD FW800 MyBook - More backups
4x 500GB WD FW800 Passports - Installers and even more backups.

 

[Mac Newblet]

Samsung 830 120GB Boot/app

Seagate 3TB ST3000DM001

G-Technology G-RAID 2 TB external via FW800

WD My Book Live 2TB NAS Time Machine

 

[Whaditis]

My setup as follows:

Optical bay 1 - 120GB OCZ Colossus SSD for OSX and apps
Optical bay 2 - 640GB Hitachi HDD for Windows 7 Ultimate Bootcamp


Drive Bay 1 - }
= RAID0 Western Digital Enterprise RE4 1TBx2 (Work disk) = 2TB
Drive Bay 2 - }


Drive Bay 3 - Western Digital Red 2TB for Data
Drive Bay 4 - Western Digital Red 2TB for Backup (Clone via Carbon Copy Cloner)


All 6 bays are now full.


External - NETGEAR Ready NAS duo with 640GBx2 Western Digital Black HDD in Mirror array for old photos.

 

[Zerozal]

300GB 10,000 rpm WD VelociRaptor: Boot, OS, Apps
2TB RAID 0 array (2x 1TB WD Blacks): Data, photos, videos, DevonThink database, etc.
2TB WD Green for Time Machine backup

I also have several drives (inc. 1 that I keep off site) that get a full CCC backup once/month.

 

[ScottishCaptain]

- 4x1TB WD Apple Drives in a 2.81TB RAID5 array (everything lives on this, I don't entirely care about partitioning- never had a reason to)

- Caldigit VR2 2x2TB external RAID unit (RAID1, 2TB combined storage) over an eSATA connection to a Sonnet Tech Tempo SATA Pro 6Gb 4-Port PCI-e card. This is used for TM backups.

- 2x 1TB DataLocker Enterprise drives in a software RAID1 configuration. These drives handle AES encryption on the device itself (they're very, very nifty units), I use them to store all my work data and crypto certificates.

I do have a weenie 500GB USB 2.0 G-Tech drive (it's older then the ages- bought it well over 7 years ago), but I only use that for booting Windows 8 x64 Enterprise through UEFI so I can play games on this system natively.

-SC

 

[Erlang]

Having started computing prior to domestic HD being freely available, I do have a bit of a storage compulsion.

So...

BootSSD Crucial 256GB ML, Apps
Bay 1 Hitachi 640GB Master..(most home sub_folders)
Bay 2 Storage 2GB WD Green.. Stuff, and VM partition
Bay 3 Images 2GB WD Green.. Photos, iPhoto, Aperture Libraries
Bay 4 Video 2GB WD Green.. FCPX, and video files.

eSATA RAID 0 3TB, for scratch.

FW 3TB Time Machine

FW 1TB Spare (retired Time Machine)

USB 3 2TB Spare

eSATA bare drive dock plus 2 340GB WD Blues for CarbonCopy clones of BootSSD for offsite rotate.

Synology 207+ 750 RAID 1, movies, music, photos to stream to PS3.


I'd need counseling