What do you think of my storage drive configuration/backup in my Mac Pro?

[diehardmacfan]

Hi everyone,

I am thinking of purchasing a bunch of drives both internal and external for my mac pro. I will be raiding some of them. I will tell you how I will be arranging my drives and I would appreciete some comments and if there is anything that I should do to make it better.

I will have 1 750GB SATA drive in bay 1 as a boot drive. It will also hold my applications, music, games... Basically all of my personal things.

Then I will have 3 LaCie Porche Drives via FireWire 400. The sizes will be 500GB, 250GB, and 160GB. I will concatenate those 3 drives together to make a big 910GB drive. When time machine comes out on leopard I will use that 910GB drive to backup to from my 750 GB internat drive.

Now in bay 2, 3, and 4 in my mac pro I will be buying 3 750GB SATA hard drives. I will use RAID 0 (Stripping) making an ultra fast 2.25 Terabyte drive for video editing.

To back that 2.25 terabyte volume I will purchase 5 LaCie d2 eSATA II 3Gbits Hard Drive. I will concatenate those 5 drives together for backup. I will have to also get a 4 port SATA PCI-E card and 2 Port SATA PCI-E card.

Thank you everyone for reading this and I would appreciate any comments. Is there anything that should be changed.

Thank you for your responses!!

 

[Father Jack]

Wow, awesome

FJ

 

[akadmon]

Wow, awesome

FJ

Yes, what else is there to say?!

 

[AliensAreFuzzy]

Yes, what else is there to say?!

"I want it"

 

[dartzorichalcos]

What games do you play? How many games and photos do you have?
What applications do you use?

 

[NorCalLights]

Use 1TB drives from Lacie or others (really 2 500GB drives in one case) instead of all those smaller drives? It'll save on desk space and cabling.

Just a thought...

 

[diehardmacfan]

What games do you play? How many games and photos do you have?

X-Plane takes up 60 gigs
only a couple gigs of photos
30 gigs of iTunes
FCS2 takes up 120 Gigs
CS3 takes up 50 Gigs
Then I will set aside prob 200 gigs for windows and then all of the other extra space to expand on

THe other three drives will be all for video editing

 

[filman408]

FCS2 only takes up 66GB - not 120GB

• 4GB of disk space required to install all applications
• Additional 62GB required to install all optional templates, content, and tutorials (may be installed on separate disks) The 62GB includes:
- 9GB for DVD Studio Pro content
- 8GB for Motion templates and tutorial media
- 24GB for Soundtrack Pro audio content
- 12GB for LiveFonts and LiveType animated elements and templates
- 2GB for Apple Pro Training Final Cut Studio Tutorials media

 

[jtt]

CS3 Design Premium only takes 5 gigs

 

[diehardmacfan]

CS3 Design Premium only takes 5 gigs

I'm getting CS3 Master Collection and to reply to the previous person, Sorry I didn't know that the 62 gigs counted all of that other thing. Sorry for my mistake.

 

[Schroedinger]

I would recommend a different internal layout. Get a superfast high rpm disk for bay 1 for the OS and apps, and system "stuff." Then, in bay 2 keep a large disk, 750 or 1 TB, for all your photos and music and files, etc. Then, take two 1 TB drives and set up your RAID scratch disk.

This will slow your RAID performance, but I doubt it'll be a bottleneck, and this set up will also speed up performance of everyday activities.

I also agree with the poster that suggested larger externals. I don't know if cost is an issue for you, sounds kinda like it isn't, but I think a few TB backup drives and you'd be good to go.

One other benefit of the setup I've suggested, is that you can install the OS on your second drive. This way you can boot using HD2 if you ever need to do disk repairs or maintenance on HD1.

good luck.

 

[diehardmacfan]

I would recommend a different internal layout. Get a superfast high rpm disk for bay 1 for the OS and apps, and system "stuff." Then, in bay 2 keep a large disk, 750 or 1 TB, for all your photos and music and files, etc. Then, take two 1 TB drives and set up your RAID scratch disk.

This will slow your RAID performance, but I doubt it'll be a bottleneck, and this set up will also speed up performance of everyday activities.

I also agree with the poster that suggested larger externals. I don't know if cost is an issue for you, sounds kinda like it isn't, but I think a few TB backup drives and you'd be good to go.

One other benefit of the setup I've suggested, is that you can install the OS on your second drive. This way you can boot using HD2 if you ever need to do disk repairs or maintenance on HD1.

good luck.

thanks for your reply
you were very helpful
I might do what you said. I am just wondering if there are 1 TB internal SATA drives for that mac pro.
I haven't heard of any.
The reason I was going to raid 3 disks was because 1.5 terabytes wasn't going to be enough with 750 GB a drive.
If they make 1 TB internal drives then I will go with what you say.

 

[bld44]

Good Lord! Amazingly cool setup- but I still can't understand why you'd need that much space, I sure as heck couldn't.

 

[brooker]

Rather than dealing with that many external drives, i'd recommend getting an enclosure that could hold multiple drives (like the LaCie recommended). Especially since you plan on using these as a single volume, this will greatly reduce any latency or sync issues if any FW drives have connectivity issues. It also reduces the number of possible points of failure. You can find 2, 3, or 4 bay enclosures for about the same number of hundreds of dollars. The other advantage of doing it in a single encloser is that you can raid the drives for increased performance. Have you considered using the FW800 port to connect the external drives?

I'd also echo the comment about a fast disk for your boot vol. You may not be able to go as high as 750GB, but you could get a 15k RPM drive with as much as 150GB for a "reasonable" price.

If system up-time must be maximized, then i'd also highly recommend a mirror set for your boot volume to protect against drive failure.

Hope that helps! have fun with it.

 

[diehardmacfan]

Rather than dealing with that many external drives, i'd recommend getting an enclosure that could hold multiple drives (like the LaCie recommended). Especially since you plan on using these as a single volume, this will greatly reduce any latency or sync issues if any FW drives have connectivity issues. It also reduces the number of possible points of failure. You can find 2, 3, or 4 bay enclosures for about the same number of hundreds of dollars. The other advantage of doing it in a single encloser is that you can raid the drives for increased performance. Have you considered using the FW800 port to connect the external drives?

I'd also echo the comment about a fast disk for your boot vol. You may not be able to go as high as 750GB, but you could get a 15k RPM drive with as much as 150GB for a "reasonable" price.

If system up-time must be maximized, then i'd also highly recommend a mirror set for your boot volume to protect against drive failure.

Hope that helps! have fun with it.

yes it did help
I will be getting the Lacie 2 TB bigger disk and I will be using firewire 800 instead of SATA. It will be cheaper because I will have to buy SATA PCI-E cards. I opened your link and that 15,000 RPM drive is SCSI while the mac pro requires SATA drives. Hopefully updated mac pros will have that option. There is a Raptor drive, which is 10,000 RPM, at also 150 gigs which i am thinking about getting. I think I might go with the stock 250GB or 500GB for my personal data and the raptor 150 gig for the OS and apps. What do you think about that?? Thanks for your help again

 

[floam]

.

 

[ChrisA]

Hi everyone,

I am thinking of purchasing a bunch of drives both internal and external for my mac pro. I will be raiding some of them. I will tell you how I will be arranging my drives and I would appreciete some comments and if there is anything that I should do to make it better.

I will have 1 750GB SATA drive in bay 1 as a boot drive. It will also hold my applications, music, games... Basically all of my personal things.

Then I will have 3 LaCie Porche Drives via FireWire 400. The sizes will be 500GB, 250GB, and 160GB. I will concatenate those 3 drives together to make a big 910GB drive. When time machine comes out on leopard I will use that 910GB drive to backup to from my 750 GB internat drive.

Now in bay 2, 3, and 4 in my mac pro I will be buying 3 750GB SATA hard drives. I will use RAID 0 (Stripping) making an ultra fast 2.25 Terabyte drive for video editing.

To back that 2.25 terabyte volume I will purchase 5 LaCie d2 eSATA II 3Gbits Hard Drive. I will concatenate those 5 drives together for backup. I will have to also get a 4 port SATA PCI-E card and 2 Port SATA PCI-E card.

Thank you everyone for reading this and I would appreciate any comments. Is there anything that should be changed.

Thank you for your responses!!

A concatenated "raid-o" is the worst possible device to use for a backup device. Notice I did not say "really bad" but "worse possible". OK it could be even worse, you could have concatenated more drives. The reason comes from the study of probability and statistics: If drive D[1] has probibility of failure P[1] then the probibility of the concatenated device failing is P[1]+P[2]+...+P[n] for n drives. If n is large enough the sum approaches 1. In short if any one of the drivers fails you loose everyhing on all three drives.

Other raid systems like RAID-5 are very different. With those system two drives would have to fail at the same time before you'd loose data. This is what you want for a backup device.

Also, do you have a plan for moving the data off site? Fire or theft is a comon cause of data lose and an external drive will not help you.

 

[brooker]

yes it did help
I will be getting the Lacie 2 TB bigger disk and I will be using firewire 800 instead of SATA. It will be cheaper because I will have to buy SATA PCI-E cards.

Good call... that saves you the PCI slots in case you need them later, as well.

I opened your link and that 15,000 RPM drive is SCSI while the mac pro requires SATA drives. Hopefully updated mac pros will have that option.

Whoa, i was sure i had read that you could configure the MP with SAS drives. But nowi can't see where i might have seen that. Whoops! Good catch, thanks! I must have been reading teh XServe config page too much. Hm... now i need to figure out what to do with the 15k SAS drives i bought in anticipation of ordering my MP...

There is a Raptor drive, which is 10,000 RPM, at also 150 gigs which i am thinking about getting. I think I might go with the stock 250GB or 500GB for my personal data and the raptor 150 gig for the OS and apps. What do you think about that?? Thanks for your help again

Um, yeah, that sounds like the way to go then. So long as you can fit all your apps on there, that would definitely be the best set up. Again, the fastest way to recover from a drive crash is by using a mirror set, so go raid 1 if a failure will impact your productivity/income.

Either way, raid the other 2-3 drives, and even using 7200's will run very quick.

 

[Fortis]

If you want 1 TB HDs, I'd get a couple Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 7200 RPM drives (32 MB cache). Their performance almost matches the 150 GB 10,000 RPM WD Raptors, even when the Deskstars aren't in RAID-0 and the Raptors are.

I'd avoid RAID-0 altogether, as it doubles your chances of losing your data, because if one drive dies in a RAID-0, all data on both drives is lost. Back to the Deskstars though, even when AAM is on (better acoustic managament to make the drive quieter), its performance is barely lower than that of the Raptors.

This is a no-brainer for me. The ultimate RAID setup would to get 4 of these drives and RAID-10 them

Check this link to read up on the Deskstar 7K1000:

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2969&p=8

 

[diehardmacfan]

If you want 1 TB HDs, I'd get a couple Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 7200 RPM drives (32 MB cache). Their performance almost matches the 150 GB 10,000 RPM WD Raptors, even when the Deskstars aren't in RAID-0 and the Raptors are.

I'd avoid RAID-0 altogether, as it doubles your chances of losing your data, because if one drive dies in a RAID-0, all data on both drives is lost. Back to the Deskstars though, even when AAM is on (better acoustic managament to make the drive quieter), its performance is barely lower than that of the Raptors.

This is a no-brainer for me. The ultimate RAID setup would to get 4 of these drives and RAID-10 them

Check this link to read up on the Deskstar 7K1000:

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2969&p=8

i found the 1TB hard drive on Hitachi's websight
are you sure that it will work in the mac pro and also where can i purchase it

i can't find any stores that sell it
thanks

 

[NewbieNerd]

The reason comes from the study of probability and statistics: If drive D[1] has probibility of failure P[1] then the probibility of the concatenated device failing is P[1]+P[2]+...+P[n] for n drives. If n is large enough the sum approaches 1.

Hmmm, so if I have 10 drives and each has a 10% chance of failure, then I have a 100% chance of failure? I don't think so. Consider actually studying this probability you speak of... the chance of failure is 1 - [(1-P[1]) x (1-P[2]) x ... x (1-P[n])].

 

[johnee]

What is your proposed cost?

Can you provide some implementation details when you are done?

Thanks.

 

[diehardmacfan]

Hello Everyone

Thank you to everyone for all of their help. Everyone was extremely helpful to getting this planned out.

I will now tell you what I am thinking about doing.

I will get two Hitachi 1 TB SATA hard drives to go internally in the mac pro.

To Backup those I will get 1 lacie bigger disk which is 2TB.

I will have 1 750GB internal hard drive for the OS and my personal stuff.

That will be backed up to 1 160Gb, 250GB, and 500GB, lacie porche hard drives.

For the two 1TB drives and the one lacie bigger disk drive, I will use RAID 0+1.

Then to backup my 750 Gb drive I will use leopards time machine.

The only part of this that i am a little concerned about is my two 1TB internal drives and the lacie bigger disk backup. Basically they will both be striped. Then I will mirror the stripped RAID's together.
There is a part of me that doesn't want to mirror the SATA drives to the lacie because it is firewire 800 which is slower that SATA II. Where there be some latency if I mirror my two RAID sets when one is SATA II and one is Firewire 800? If so, will it be noticable?

Thanks for all of your help again!!

 

[patrick0brien]

i found the 1TB hard drive on Hitachi's websight
are you sure that it will work in the mac pro and also where can i purchase it

i can't find any stores that sell it
thanks

-diehardmacfan

These just entered the channel so it's not quite on the shelves yet.

Expect them in the next few weeks though.

You can do google searches and bookmark the sites that already have entries (they'll all say "Out of Stock" right now)

 

[diehardmacfan]

What is your proposed cost?

Can you provide some implementation details when you are done?

Thanks.

The proposed cost of the drives not including the 750 GB internal drive that comes the mac pro will be about $1600. $820 for the lacie bigger disk and 400 for each of the 1TB hitachi hard drives. If I ever need more space I will get another 750GB or 1TB drive to go into Bay 4 of my mac pro. (If I ever run out of my 2 Terabyte RAID.