Teach me about internal hard drives *please*

[amin]

I have been reading about hard drives all over the place, and I still don't know enough to set up my Mac Pro optimally for home video and photography work. Here are a some questions I have. If you can answer even one, please reply.

1) I have read several posts by people who are using a fast drive as a boot disk. I was thinking of getting a Raptor for this purpose. If I make my fastest drive in the Mac Pro a boot drive, won't everything else (like my Applications and Home folders) automatically go there as well?

2) If I do dedicate a fast drive as a boot drive, can it also serve as a scratch disk, or will this significantly degrade performance?

3) I know the Mac Pro currently doesn't support hardware RAID internally, but can I buy an external FW800 hardware RAID 0 enclosure? Would this give me significant performance gains (as a scratch disk) compared to a single internal fast drive or two software striped internal fast drives?

4) How much difference does 8MB vs 16MB cache make?

Currently I have a 320GB 7,200 rpm WD drive with 16MB cache as my boot/storage drive and a 250GB 7,200 rpm WD drive with 8MB cache as my Windows drive (Boot Camp). The latter came with the Mac Pro. I am planning to buy a couple smaller, faster drives or an external FW 800 enclosure and am not sure how best to go about it. No specific budget, but less is more .

EDIT - If anyone knows good places/forums for me to read more about specifically this sort of thing, point me in the right direction!

EDIT2 - Anyone out there?

 

[Danksi]

I have been reading about hard drives all over the place, and I still don't know enough to set up my Mac Pro optimally for home video and photography work. Here are a some questions I have. If you can answer even one, please reply.

This is how I'm setting my Mac Pro up at the moment. I'm doing SD video and some basic photo work.

System/Applications - Std. 160Gb 8Mb Drive
Docs/Media - 250Gb 8Mb (out of my G-Tech-Q ext. drive)
Video capture/scratch - 500Gb 16Mb

Backups (mostly of media drive) - 300Gb 8Mb IDE drive & USB2.0 ext. enc.

 

[spinne1]

I have been reading about hard drives all over the place, and I still don't know enough to set up my Mac Pro optimally for home video and photography work. Here are a some questions I have. If you can answer even one, please reply.

1) I have read several posts by people who are using a fast drive as a boot disk. I was thinking of getting a Raptor for this purpose. If I make my fastest drive in the Mac Pro a boot drive, won't everything else (like my Applications and Home folders) automatically go there as well?

Yes

2) If I do dedicate a fast drive as a boot drive, can it also serve as a scratch disk, or will this significantly degrade performance?

Ideally, your scratch disk would be separate. Your performance would still be fine either way on a Mac Pro (especially if you are not using Rosetta with your apps). How aggressive will you be in your picture crunching work? Unless you are very fast, I doubt you need any sort of raid or ultra-fast drive.

3) I know the Mac Pro currently doesn't support hardware RAID internally, but can I buy an external FW800 hardware RAID 0 enclosure? Would this give me significant performance gains (as a scratch disk) compared to a single internal fast drive or two software striped internal fast drives?

Yes, you can buy external FW800 raid enclosures for OS X (google for "FW800 raid os x"). As to your second question, I don't know. If you do have an external raid, you will still need a large enough drive to serve as a backup (an additional external or internal for example).

4) How much difference does 8MB vs 16MB cache make?

About 8mb I imagine
But seriously, the people on this forum seem to think it will make almost no difference:
http://forums.macnn.com/58/imac-emac-and-mac-mini/304136/hd-performance-16mb-vs-8mb/

Currently I have a 320GB 7,200 rpm WD drive with 16MB cache as my boot/storage drive and a 250GB 7,200 rpm WD drive with 8MB cache as my Windows drive (Boot Camp). The latter came with the Mac Pro. I am planning to buy a couple smaller, faster drives or an external FW 800 enclosure and am not sure how best to go about it. No specific budget, but less is more .

How best or how cheapest? The cheapest way is to buy brand new drives off ebay and put them inside the Mac Pro (can it hold 4 drives?). The fastest way is to either buy 10,000 rpm fast drives or use a striped raid.

Once again, however, I would USE the system as is for a time to get a feel for whether any of this is necessary. Other than needing drives for backup (which you do), you may find the performance as is completely satisfactory.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

If I make my fastest drive in the Mac Pro a boot drive, won't everything else (like my Applications and Home folders) automatically go there as well?

Yes, but you can set your home folder (of each separate user) to a different location with NetInfo Manager.

Just do a backup first. I had my home folder on a separate partition when I moved to OS X (*nix influence), but I only messed with that on a clean install, not a filled home folder...

 

[amin]

Thank you all for the great advice. Spinne1, I know your advice about waiting and using is prudent, but this is the first truly high-end computer, and I want to see it really cook !