Sonnet Tempo SSD RAID 1 or 0

[rezwits]

I am going to go ahead and get this:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sonnet Technologies/TSATA6SSDPSE/

But I keep going over this one subject like a bad dream over and over:

All I need is 1 TB of boot drive storage, which WILL have a bootable back up external drive.

But I can't decide wether to get 2 500 GB Crucial SSDs and RAID 0 them <or>
get 2 1 TB Crucial SSDs and RAID 1.

The machine is the Mac Pro 3,1 8 Core 2.66. There is a separate drive for users already setup. This will be used primarily 90% of the time as a Server with the moderate use of final cut editing of some clips once or twice a month.

I want my boot time and application launch time improved which I know this will happen.

The only question is. HOW RELIABLE will my SSDs be. I have been using the Crucial 500GB M500 SSD and it's been incredible on the MacBook Pro.

As you may know if I RAID 0 2x500 GB SSDs the PRICE will be saving me $400 and the speed will be double (GEEZ)

if I RAID 1 2x1TB SSDs the PRICE will be doubled and the speed will be half.

So we are talking about a 4x multiplier here (or 400% overall efficiency / 100% efficiency) vs (Twice the Reliability).

The Server part is mainly an Xcode Server with Git / SVN Repositories, so I have to have concurrency.

Thing is I feel like SSDs are just SOOooo.. much more reliable! I have gone over drive failures charts vs older HDs (eh).

Do any of you feel I should take the risk? Save the Money and get the Speed?

I am 60/40 leaning towards going that way.

Is this a no brainer? I am I just out of touch when it comes to SSD reliability?

Or is the speed difference not going to be that noticeable due to the fact that ONE SSD by ITSELF with be PLENTY fast!

Thanks let me know, and I will be wrapping this up by January 15th.

Laters..

one note: All of my machines (except MacBooks) are RAID 1 or RAID 10, and ALL backed up externally. So the security is SO PLEASANT. No worries at all. Years go by and I sleep well no problems.

 

[thefredelement]

If you're going to have a bootable external backup why not just go for performance?

If you want to have it both ways, get two cards.

 

[h9826790]

If you're going to have a bootable external backup why not just go for performance?

Same question here, the backup is just a backup, IMO, there is no need to spend too much on the backup's performance. All you need is just a reliable, may be bootable, normal performance HDD. For SSD, that's another story, you pay for the speed. So, no point to pay double but only get half of the performance.

Use RAID 1 on SSD is a very expensive setup for home user. It's much cheaper to use clone software to maintain the bootable backup, but remain more or less the same reliability.

 

[theitsage]

I'd say go for performance if you spend the money on SSDs and a PCIe SATA III controller. I had this same debate not too long ago. My current setup has a RAID 0 of 4 SSDs and a RAID 1 of 2 4TB HDDs for Time Machine backup and media storage.

 

[rezwits]

I am thinking

I am thinking save the $400 on only getting 2x 500GB SSDs, and then RAID 0.

If I have a failure of 1 of the ssd drives, then I will just have to make sure to backup to the HD (non-ssd) at least every Sunday night, no laziness. If during the posting to the git repositories it goes down, which this is a very slim possibility, the users can handle the crash and repost there repo's again from their machines. And there won't be too much activity.

I figure application launch would be like 4 seconds to 2 seconds. Which is kinda ridiculously low but...

I might get into having more fun rendering video.

I found out that you don't get double read speed from the cards SSD RAID 1 even if you are reading from two identical drives, bummer and clincher.

Thanks for the suggestions!

 

[hfg]

I have been running the Sonnet Tempo Pro SSD (older one) with a pair of Crucial M4 512GB SSDs in RAID-0 booting OS X for almost 2 years with no problems.

These are part of the normal TimeMachine backup, and once a day CCC does a bootable clone of the RAID-0 array to a hard disk.

Attached are speed tests with the Crucial M4 and faster Samsung 840 Pro SSDs:

 

[m4v3r1ck]

RAID0 SSD's for OSX -> RAID1 HDD's for bootable CCC

I use the Velocity DUO X2 with a pair of 500 GB EVO's in RAID0 for my OSX, as I need the performance. I use an iOmega 2x 1TB HDD RAID1 (no need for speed!) external enclosure thru Firewire800 for my redundant Carbon Clone Copy bootable backup.

I never had any issues so far and I feel save with the external CCC bootdrive. Good luck choosing your fastest and safest setup! Cheers

 

[rezwits]

Black friday deal! Wow!

Hey I just wanted to let you guys know, I picked up 3 of these:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/crucial...1306587882.p?id=mp1306587882&skuId=1306587882

They were $250 last week, and dropped in price today to $180 so, good luck and...

Happy Holidays!!!

 

[rezwits]

Well All Finished, except video card (I know which one tho)

Due to some serious Cyber Deals, I went all out and upgraded everything pretty much except my media server, who needs to, hell NAS' can almost do the job completely.

So, I had to upgrade my Mac Pro 2006 1,1 that has the 5770 and 16GB of RAM that I use for triple booting. It was getting slow to use, and pretty much all my Mac Pros because I am Soooo.. used to SSDs on my MacBook Pro and Air, I mean launch time is so serious. Often I find myself getting pissed because of accidental dock hits, where you hit the wrong app, on the Mac Pros without SSD, oh my gosh AGGRAVATION!

I had two of the old 250GB drives that came with the default Mac Pros and replaced them with 2 x 240GB M500 Crucial's, one for Windows 7 the other for Linux. But before I did this I was trying to do an Apricorn card with a 480GB M500 for the 2006 MP. The thing was terrible. Speed was slow, can't boot properly, and didn't work with triple booting at all. And here is the speed compared to just putting the SSD in a SATA mount.

1st: Apricorn, 2nd: Plain ole SATA II

So, I am like why should I put this card in? OUT you go.

The Mac Pro is running like a champ for a $300 PC box, really. Cause that's what it's for just sitting there with Windows for OCTGN. And website checking in IE, other stupid windows crap. But not getting wild, cause of course I use WinClone.

The Mac Pro 2009 is looking really great now. Bottom line I used to have what was:

30 second Apps
20 second Apps and
10 second Apps
Launch times.

and now I have
3 second Apps
2 second Apps and
1 second Apps
Launch times.

And that is the best. Cause my machine now has what I am calling a front end and back end. The front end is launching doing quick things and setting up crunch time, which is the back end, which is 16 virtual cores.

I used 2 480GBs like I said in RAID 0 and I used the 3 of 4 1 TB drives SATA to build a 3 TB RAID 0 for User Storage. I am thinking about a RAID Card for those drives for SATA III, but here are the results I have for the Sonnet RAID and the WD Black SATA II RAID 0 (3 drive), the fourth is pseudo mirror called, nightly for exactly that nightly CCCs of the Sonnet.

1st Sonnet, 2nd SATA II RAID 0

It's pretty acceptable right now, I am happy. Of course the last thing is the R9 280.

Oh I also threw in a 4 port USB3 Sonnet Card. I am telling you man Sonnet is awesome, great product. I haven't tried to see if the USB3 card boots yet and I will.

Thanks for the help and interest. PEACE OUT I guess!

Laters...