SoftRAID 3 -- some questions

[p0intblank]

I'm getting a dual-core Power Mac G5 (when they are eventually announced; I am that confident ) and plan on having two disk drives in a RAID for faster processing in Photoshop CS. I tend to work large files from time to time so this would be greatful to me. Anyway I have two questions:

1. How easy is it to get everything running smoothly? The official Web site makes it seem very easy, but I just want some of you here to confirm it for me.

2. If one drive in the RAID fails, does that mean my other drive would fail? This will be software-based, so does that make any difference?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Bear]

That leads to some questions, like what level of RAID were you planning on using? With RAID 0, if a disk dies you lose all the data on the RAID set. The other disk doesn't have to be replaced, but the data is gone.

Other RAID levels allow for disk failures without losing data, but they each have their pluses and minuses.

Now as for speeding up Photoshop, the best way to do it in a two disk setup is to have your Photoshop Scratch Disk be on a different disk from the system disk. And as for the photos/images, they're probably better stored (maube on a seperate partition) on the system disk. The best setupwould be a three disk setup to seperate the system/swap disk, the scratch disk and the images you're working on.

Something to note, the scratch disk is what probably needs the best performance in most cases.

 

[davidcb13]

It depends on what type of raid setup you are using... this site explains the differences.
http://www.acnc.com/04_00.html

 

[Bear]

It depends on what type of raid setup you are using... this site explains the differences.
http://www.acnc.com/04_00.html

Pretty basic and only one major error, with RAID 3, with a disk failure, performance is not affected only if it's the parity disk that fails. If a data disk dies with RAID 3, performance is affected.

Also, The RAID 3 description is a bit off.

 

[davidcb13]

Pretty basic and only one major error, with RAID 3, with a disk failure, performance is not affected only if it's the parity disk that fails. If a data disk dies with RAID 3, performance is affected.

Also, The RAID 3 description is a bit off.

Well its a good general overview and it would allow him to see what raid solution would work best for him. And then he can look farther into how to set it up etc...

 

[p0intblank]

I don't know if I want to do RAID anymore, because of the disadvantage of if one drive fails, so do all the others. Ah, I don't know! But thanks the link and help, I appreciate it.

 

[Makosuke]

The RAID comments here are good, but in answer to the original question, yes, SoftRaid really is that easy to set up--impressively so. Of course, the built-in OSX RAID is easy too, and for RAID0 I'd probably just use it since you're hosed if one disk goes down anyway. RAID1, on the other hand, SoftRaid handles better--it does rebuilds more smoothly, is better about warning of drive failure, and I believe it does distributed reads for added speed where Apple's built-in doesn't.

That said, I wouldn't use RAID0 for anything but a scratch or capture drive, as the danger of failure is *relatively* high (still rather low) and the real-world speed advantage for anything but one solid stream of data (video capture, that is) isn't as great as some people like to think anyway (you'll note that Storage Review, for example, says that RAID0 rarely gets you much of a speed boost in everyday computing).

RAID1, on the other hand, is awesome. Hey, if you've got the money, there's always 0+1!