Advice on setting up a RAID

Hi all - I've learned a lot from the posts on setting up a RAID array on my new Mac Pro - thank you for all the info. Apple Care Support said that they do not support RAID configurations, so they can't help me understand some of the thornier questions. My goal is to optimize my computer for video editing. I have two internal 500gig drives and an external 1000gig G-Tech drive that I bought to use as a backup. My plan was to connect my two internal drives into a striped RAID array (which I understand to be the best option for speedy data processing), and then back up the entire thing nightly on my external firewire drive. Does that sound like a good setup plan?
If that is indeed a good setup, what is the easiest way to make my nightly backup onto my external drive? Can I use .Mac Backup software?
Thank you...

Barefeats has done some tests of RAID and non, pitting Raptor against other models. And of course all it says it which drive runs the TEST better, not whether RAID is better for a boot drive, or whether a fast single drive, and what type of work you ask it to do.
StorageReview put together one of their FAQs on RAID, latency, boot drives, TCQ (and NCQ) and their usefulness. You can blame their testing or conclusions as being 'biased' because it was done on Windows or used different testing methodology (the Mac does not have mature variety of tools generally as are available for Widows, nor can you tweak drive settings on a Mac as those programs only run under DOS or Windows).
As anyone who knows me, can attest, I use to use 15K boot drive, now switched to Raptor, but I also host "/Users" on a stripped RAID. Isolating the boot drive from /users has its own benefits (concurrent I/O; easy to upgrade, backup, manage, and keeps the boot drive free of the clutter of media and data files).
If you are a heavy Photoshop CS2+ user, you would find a 10K Raptor RAID boot/scratch setup to offer the best performance. So if you really like RAID, I would encourage you to try a pair of Raptors at some point.
And if not Raptor, the Seagate Cheetah 15K.4 delivers almost 100MB/sec writes (the 15K.5 is probably SAS and has got some problem or firmware issue holding it back).
I'd take an Atlas 15K II, but they are EOL now by Maxtor-Seagate (95MB/sec and not that much noisier than Raptor).

Similar Messages

Set up a RAID 1 with four Hard disks with DiskUtility

I have a Sonnet Fusion-500 RAID enclosure with four hard disks of 500 GB (2TB total) connected to a Power Mac G5 (2x2.3 GHz, 2GB RAM, MacOSX 10.4.8) through a Sonnet Serial ATA PCI express card (Tempo E4P model). Since I have a total capacity of 2 TB, I would like to set up a RAID 1 (mirrored) and combine the four drives in a final working volume of 1GB, (and the remaining 1GB in the mirror volume). I've been trying to setup the RAID with DiskUtility, but I cannot get a working volume of 1 GB (only 500 GB -the size of a single disc-). Can anybody please give me some help in setting up this type of RAID?
The four 500 GB discs are OK, since I can create a RAID 0 (~ 2 TB) or initialize them al individual drives without problems.
Power Mac G5 (2x2.3 GHz & 2GB RAM) Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Glad I could help.
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How can I set up a RAID 1 disc set

How can I set up a RAID 1 disc set using my existing Time Machine backup disk plus another HDD without loosing my backup?
Thanks

TM is the worst, most cantankerous Backup App I've ever encountered... I'd pride myself if I could come up with a worse one!
Get carbon copy cloner to make an exact copy of your old HD to the New one...
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
Or SuperDuper...
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/
Or the most expensive one & my favorite, Tri-Backup...
http://www.tri-edre.com/english/tribackup.html

How can I tell if HD is set up for RAID?

I received an external Western Digital 4TB drive with some files on it and I'm trying to tell if the drive is already set up for RAID or not. The company I received it from couldn't tell me and according to the WD box, it's "pre-configured for maximum capacity (RAID 0)". However, when I go into Disk Utility to view the drive, it says the capacity is only 1.8T.
I little more detail... In Disk Utility the left window shows the drive named, "1.8 TB WD My Book Media". Total capacity 1.8TB
S.M.A.R.T. Status: Not Supported
Partition Map Scheme: GUID Partition Table
...In the Partition window it looks like a single partition. Again, Size: 1.8 TB, Available space: 1.1 TB.
Does this make sense? Sorry, I'm not familiar with RAID drives and how they're set up and used. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.
I'm just trying to find if this drive is in fact set up as a RAID drive and if so, is it mirroring to the second drive in the enclosure? or not? And if not why does it say that the drive is only 1.8 TB?
Sorry for the rambling.
Thanks.

There is no such thing as a "RAID" drive. Any drive can be used in a RAID array. A single drive is not a RAID drive. It is simply a single drive. When multiple drives are combined into an array via software and/or hardware then one has a RAID array.
Now as far as I can determine WD does not make a single drive larger than 2 TBs. Formatted the drives will contain roughly 1.8 TBs. WD does make a My Book version that has two 2 TB drives that can be configured into a striped RAID array that will provide 4 TBs of storage. I don't know if the product is pre-configured as a RAID array or if you must configure it as such using Disk Utility. For the latter you must first partition and format each drive then use the RAID tab option of DU to set up the RAID array. Select Disk Utility Help from the DU Help menu and search for "raid" to get the help articles on how to set up striped or mirrored RAIDs.

Macbook Pro: How do I set up a RAID system?

Macbook Pro: How do I set up a RAID system on a MACBOOK PRO properly?
Can I have the OS on the same drives or does it need to be seperate?
I mostly want to do this becuase I am having a lot of problems with the "spinning ball of death" and slow speeds. I have my RAM maxed out at 6Gigs and my 7200rpm 750GB HD is about half full.
Am I correct in trying to do an external RAID Drive to help with speed?
If yes, what is the best way to do this and which type of connection (USB, Firewire, etc) is best to use?
Thanks!

Edward House
Edward House
Am I correct in trying to do an external RAID Drive to help with speed?
No
Why is my computer slow?

Setting up a RAID 0 between the Mini's internal HD and an external

Would it be possible to set up a RAID 0 between two hard drive, one being the internal drive of the MacMini and the other being an external firewire drive?
Would these two drive have to be configured outside of the computer in external enclosure and then one transplanted into the mac mini, or will the operating system allow this to be set up between the two drive?

Yes you can RAID the internal Mac mini 2.5" hard drive with a FireWire external, but a striped RAID set is always limited by the speed of the slowest drive and the size of the smallest drive.
As such I would not expect much of a performance gain and you would have to erase your internal drive to create the striped RAID set while booting from a 3rd drive to setup the RAID0.
Using a FW boot drive will give you increased performance. You can see details here:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/wiebetech/max/
Or if you really want to speed up the Mac mini read about the AMUG Super-mini project which uses 3.5" SATA hard drives. It was tested in single and RAID0 configurations on the internal ATA/100 IDE bus of the Mac mini
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/addonics/mini/
Michael

Setting up a RAID of system drives

hello everyone,
I am looking to add a second system drive for more hd space. I was planning on purchasing a second Raptor and setting up a RAID 0. will I need to format my existing drive, or can I just plug in the new drive and set up my RAID in DU?
...any feedback appreciated, thanks.
Dual-core PwrPC 2.0ghz G5 2mb RAM Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Ok,
You already have a Raptor as boot, most likely it's a 36 or 74GB with 8 MB cache and it's hooked up to your internal SATA ports.
To create a RAID O, you must match the two drives exactly. Erase w/Zero both of them, create the RAID O set in Disk utility and clone your boot drive back from a booted external drive using cloning software. (meaning you have to first clone the original to a external then boot from it and clone to the RAID O)
Problem: Western Digital has updated all their drives with a new SATA spec, also increased the cache to 16 MB. The PowerMac's can't handle the new SATA spec (supposedly the Quad can, but I'm hearing mixed stories)
So unless you find a 8MB cache Raptor, your going to need to spend more money.
The solution if your determined to have RAID O Raptors, is to buy two of them, preferably the new 10,000 RPM 16MB cache 150GB ones, and a Firmteck SATA PCI card (the only one that's bootable off of) with 4 internal SATA ports and 4 external ports. Then hook the internal Raptors to that.
The Firmteck card will also give you the option of hooking up external SATA drives in a powered enclosure, one cable to each drive. So you can expand if you wish.
With a RAID O, you must clone (for a whole boot drive) or backup (for files) quite regularly, like at least once a week for clone and daily backup for files. Since one should be doing this anyway, it's really no big deal. Because like the other poster said, RAID O is a bit more risky, one drive goes you lose all data as the data path is split. But the speed is worth it. So with a pair of 150GB Raptors your going to need a 250-300GB drive external Firewire 800/400 drive.
Now to keep a drives performance up, you shouldn't fill it more than 50%, and certainly shouldn't fill a boot drive more than 80%. So one can use a 250GB external drive for clone backup as long as the data on the 300GB RAID O doesn't go over around 240GB. (80%) Get it?
LaCie makes a good Firewire 800/400/USB d2 drive.
However if this is a bit too much to bear on your wallet, then what you can do is reduce what you have on the boot Raptor below 50% by moving just what you have in documents, pictures, movies and audio files into NEW folders on a second internal SATA drive (preferably one with 16MB cache not from Western Digital)
Once you have slimmed up your Raptor, then clone the whole drive to a external drive, option boot from it and make sure everything works correctly, repair permissions and test all software (some copy protected ones will need to be fixed). Once your are 100% certain it's ok, then Erase w/Zero the Raptor and clone the whole drive back.
What this will do is optimize the Raptor boot drive drive, free up disk space, de-fragment large files/apps and sort of tighten everything up to the most fastest part of your boot drive, the outer tracks, in the good part of the 50% side of your drive. (vs the inner tracks where performance starts to suffer)
Without the space hogging files that are now on the second SATA drive, your drive freshly optimized, the arm in the hard drive has less space to travel to get your data that Mac OS X, apps and random music files iTunes needs to constantly access.
Now I suggest using Carbon Copy Cloner to do your optimizations with, because I know how this program clones drives, in alphabetical order on the main directory of your boot drive. So Applications, Developer (if you have installed Developers Tools from Tiger install disk) Library, System and finally Users at the end (where it could expand without de-optimizing your drive)
Always follow these rules when cloning.
1: Don't run or do anything else while a cloning process is going on.
2: Always Disk utility Erase w/Zero option all new drives one time or in the case of a security issue.
3: Option boot from the clone and check it out.
4: Repair permissions BEFORE and AFTER each cloning.
5: Avoid partial clones because of copy protection schemes hiding files on the drive.
6: Avoid cloning to partitions, especially on the same drive, because if the drive fails mechanically your screwed out of your clone as well. Keep it a boot clone to a boot clone on a separate drive.
7: If you can keep two clones of your boot drive, just in case you get hacked or have a exploit, because when you hook up the second clone, it will get owned too and possibly erased. If this happens, C boot off the installer disk (write protected) and Erase w/Zero all infected drives and disconnect from the internet/network before hooking up that last clone.
I wrote a book, I hope it helps.
Note to others: Firmteck SATA PCI card will not work in PCI-Expressed based PowerMac's.
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/firmtek/1eve4/

Setting up a Raid O system.

I have a P5E motherboard with 6 SATA slots. I have been in the editing universe since 1999 and have never used raid as I always found it very complicated to set up. However for an upcomming projet I would like to be on top of things and get rid of the eternal hard drive bottleneck problem. What is the easiest way to set up a RAID 0 system and could somebody here please guide me through the essential steps. I just was never able to figure it out. Thank you

I would highly recommend setting up Raid 10, not Raid 0.
In my hardware based system, I just added drives as members in the Raid setup from the BIOS.
Four 500GB drives give me 1TB of storage with a combination of striping and mirroring.
I actually had a hard drive problem, and never even noticed it. The next time I booted, I saw the problem, went into the Raid BIOS, removed the bad drive from the Raid and then added it back in. The Raid rebuilt itself without me doing anything and returned to "Normal."
While it's good to have someone who knows what they are doing set it up for you, it's probably better to try it yourself so you know what's going on if there's a problem in the future, IMHO.
Just don't start experimenting two days before that huge job is due to start....:)

Setting up a RAID

I just got another internal hard drive for my Mac Pro, and I'm thinking setting up a RAID between two drives. I read some documentation here on Apple, but I wanted to check and make sure about one thing. Do both of the drives I plan to set up a RAID need to be erased first? It doesn't say that in the documentation. Or can precede with the RAID even though one drive has data on it and the other doesn't.
And finally, if I plan to add VISTA to RAIDed drives, will that be a problem?
Thanks for the feedback.

All drives used in a RAID will be erased. You cannot add an active startup volume to a RAID. You cannot use a RAID for a Boot Camp Windows installation. If you install OS X on a RAID you will not be able to install firmware updates for your computer.
RAID Basics
For basic definitions and discussion of what a RAID is and the different types of RAIDs see RAIDs. Additional discussions plus advantages and disadvantages of RAIDs and different RAID arrays see:
RAID Tutorial;
RAID Array and Server: Hardware and Service Comparison>.
Hardware or Software RAID?
RAID Hardware Vs RAID Software - What is your best option?
RAID is a method of combining multiple disk drives into a single entity in order to improve the overall performance and reliability of your system. The different options for combining the disks are referred to as RAID levels. There are several different levels of RAID available depending on the needs of your system. One of the options available to you is whether you should use a Hardware RAID solution or a Software RAID solution.
RAID Hardware is always a disk controller to which you can cable up the disk drives. RAID Software is a set of kernel modules coupled together with management utilities that implement RAID in Software and require no additional hardware.
Pros and cons
Software RAID is more flexible than Hardware RAID. Software RAID is also considerably less expensive. On the other hand, a Software RAID system requires more CPU cycles and power to run well than a comparable Hardware RAID System. Also, because Software RAID operates on a partition by partition basis where a number of individual disk partitions are grouped together as opposed to Hardware RAID systems which generally group together entire disk drives, Software RAID tends be slightly more complicated to run. This is because it has more available configurations and options. An added benefit to the slightly more expensive Hardware RAID solution is that many Hardware RAID systems incorporate features that are specialized for optimizing the performance of your system.
For more detailed information on the differences between Software RAID and Hardware RAID you may want to read: Hardware RAID vs. Software RAID: Which Implementation is Best for my Application?
You would be wiser to use you second drive to backup your main drive and forget about RAIDs. They are of no real value to the home user like yourself. RAIDs are used mainly for large enterprise servers and very fast data storage systems.

Help setting up a Raid 0 on p55-gd80

Hello
Picked up 2 WD 1tb black drives i wish to use in a Raid 0 configuration on my P55-GD80 mb.
I have never set up a Raid before and would appreciate info on what Matrix/Rapid Storage drivers i will need, there are alot of them so im a bit confused here, also if these are not boot drives will i need to do the F6 bios configuration ive seen mention and such.
If someone could take a moment to give me a Step by Step or a link to one.
Thank you
EDIT: i am running Windows 7 64

Do you still have your board's manual with you? The guide is in the manual itself.
If not, you can download a softcopy of the manual from MSI website.

We use a raid server set up for apple, would like to set up a raid independent of the server to copy files

we are using a apple server for raid setup. we have a set of bad raid discs that we would like to copy info from, but do the copying independent of the server. how do we accomplish this.

I don't understand quite what you're asking. Can you provide more detail of what you're trying to do?

Need advice on setting up RAID.

I just purchased a Mac Burly 4 Bay Hard Drive Array with 4 ST31500341AS - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1500 GB SATAII 32 MB cache Drives. I will be using this array to store HD 1080i HD video. I am working on a Mac Pro I just installed a LYCeSATA PCI Card to connect the Mac Burly. I need some advice on what the best possible RAID set up would be for me, back up is important.

Hi,
I've the same machine and have a pair of samsung 64GB SSD's striped as a boot disk.
Originally I had them in the optical drive bay using a kit from maxupgrades.com, it worked like a charm. I decided to change that as I wasn't using all four drives and bought the icy dock carrier to place each drive in their own sled (still striped though) and I've two velociraptors in the other two drives.
I bought the maxupgrades kit for around the $40 mark and had to get it shipped to the UK. I sold it recently on ebay here in the UK and got £1 for it!!
As for the MAXPower eSATA 6G controller card, I've one of those hooked up to my Lacie 4big Quadra external RAID.
Funny thing with this is with my previous 3big triple usingFireWire 800 all I had to do was power the 3big up and the volumes would mount on the desktop.
With the 4big RAID using eSATA when I power up the drive nothing happens. You have to actively disconnect either the eSATA cable at the back of the RAID or at the card then reconnect it thereupon the drives mount on the desktop.
I've rambled on a bit but I hope I may have helped a little.

DAW - advice for setting up my new DAW?

Hi,
I intend to get my own DAW/general purpose computer in the next few months and was hoping to run my plan by y'all for advice. I intend to use it half for music recording, and also as a normal computer.
I plan to have a high end graphics card (dual dvi) for games etc, will run a 23" widescreen lcd (pref apple on pc) or bigger maybe upgrading to dual monitors later. I am running a HD tv card which needs some good headroom when recording. I only play far cry and need for speed when it comes to games etc so won't have a million games installed.
I have a about 50 gig of music mp3's and wmas and general stuff, so need lots of storage space. I have about 10gig of AA session files and that will grow so im thinking 30-40 gig min.
For recording/mixing, i have usually 10 trax minimum with lots of real time, sometimes locked fx, i do a lot of processing/wave editing and can have up to 10minute tracks up to 24 etc so i need some juice to power it all. running xp pro sp2.
Can someone explain raid vs ide, im told i can raid 2 similiar drives, but how much better is it, and are there draw backs? can i raid 2 x 15000rpm drives together(2 x 20 or 2 x 40 gig) as my dedicated AA session files space or is that just overkill, i plan to have maybe 2 x 250 gig 7200 or 10 000 drives raided as a dedicated digital vcr for HD tv recording, a small system drive 20-40gig just for installed stuff, another 80-250 gig for normal storage. Any ideas for best way to configure this stuff? minimum im thinking is sep small sys drive, sep AA drive/raided or not, sep bigass drive for TV recording, and sep general storage drive so thats minimum 4 or more.
Wireless keyboard (ultra flat touch keys like on bank atm's sort super silent DO THESE EXIST YET IF SO PLEASE TELL ME WHERE AND WHAT CALLED?)
and wireless optical mouse with extra side buttons and fully functional
Can y'all fill me in on scsi, im told the 14k rpm drives need a scsi
controller or osmething? tell me about this stuff please
Also, 64bit cpus? what the hell does that mean
I'm thinking the fastest intel cpu wht is it 3 gig these days with cache, or does anyone know how much dual cpu will cost (and what needs to go with it) motherboard with 800fsb and 8x agp that can take like 1-2 gig of ram (what sort is fastest?), 8 x agp graphics card that is very high end for 1080i output for high definition tv, and games.
Obviously dvd+rw/cd+rw drive.
Need advise on DAW case, ultra sound and heat proof as i might sleep in the same room and im sick of noisy computers, and i might need a big load of space with all the hdd's depending on what i get, will have a usb2. pci card no doubt and tv card etc
Wondering bout the new audigy 2 zn platinum pro thing Is this any good compared to the normal audigy 2? it says with firewire i can have 7 stereo inputs, is that really true at once, do i need extra external hardware like a mixer to do that, and does AA support that at all?
I have a decent pair of phones i will use for a while until i get studio monitors so don't worry about them for now, thats later.
I hope to spend only about 3-6 grand Australian pref no more, so any suggestions of other things to add or not to bother with etc, revisions?

Billy Corgan wrote:
> I intend to get my own DAW/general purpose computer
> in the next few months and was hoping to run my plan
> by y'all for advice.
Don't clutter a daw with too much GP stuff, office software
installations and antivirus software should generally not be installed
on a daw, and a gp computer can generally not be without either.
Generally, mind you, generally is generally a lot less general with the
more capable hardware, but a lean daw is a happy daw. Fortunately a
p2-300 with 192 megs of ram and a modern harddisk is still a lot of GP
officing computer, and such machines are not costly on the second hand
market.
> I intend to use it half for music recording, and also as
> a normal computer.
There may be valid reasons for doing that, if so then you could be well
off having multiple OS installations on it, one for GP use and one for
Audio use and making it a multibooter. It however my experience that a
multibooter always ends up being booted in the wrong OS ..... O;-)
> I plan to have a high end graphics card (dual dvi) for games etc,
A dual head card is strongly recommended. Matrox has nice cards that do
not need to have a fan on them and that do not require the utmost
hardware speed. You do not WANT to have the ultra fastest graphics card
on a daw because you need to avoid that the graphics cards bus bandwidth
requirements obstruct other, more vital chores. Less fast cards that do
not require a fan allows for a more quiet system.
> will run a 23" widescreen lcd (pref apple on pc) or bigger
> maybe upgrading to dual monitors later.
It may be that you can get dual smaller lcd's for the same budget as one
23", and it may be of more use, everybody is on some kind of a budget,
and you also need to have money over for audio hardware. Good mics and
good mic pre's do more for the quality of your sound than a larger
screen.
> I am running a HD tv card which needs some good headroom when
> recording.
Hmmm ...... select the recording options wisely, you come across as
chasing specs rather than as being aware of just what specs you actually
need.
> I only play far cry and need for speed when it comes to games etc
> so won't have a million games installed.
One never knows what the future holds, but it should be possible to
avoid having too many games installed at any one time.
> I have a about 50 gig of music mp3's and wmas and general stuff,
> so need lots of storage space. I have about 10gig of AA session
> files and that will grow so im thinking 30-40 gig min.
It is too costly pr. gigabyte to buy anything smaller than 120 GB, and
the 120 GB drives of today are all comfortably fast. You should at least
have two physical drives for Audition so as to be able to avoid
simultaneous reads and writes on the same drive, three physical drives
are imo preferable.
> For recording/mixing, i have usually 10 trax minimum with lots
> of real time, sometimes locked fx, i do a lot of processing/wave
> editing and can have up to 10minute tracks up to 24 etc so i need
> some juice to power it all. running xp pro sp2.
I think that your setup is one that would benefit of having three
physical drives to prevent having temp files on the drive that contains
the "static" audio files.
> can someone explain raid vs ide, im told i can raid
> 2 similiar drives, but how much better is it,
Depends, it is not faster than a single drive where it is fastest, but
raid 0 (simple stripe set) is less likely to show performance reduction
due to file fragmentation. A stripe set still counts as "one physical
drive", and if you want to have only two drives in it you are better off
not having them striped.
> and are there draw backs?
You can not remove just one harddisk and move it to another machine. If
one harddisk fails, then all is lost, at least if you run a simple
stripe set. The probability math is tolerable with only two disks in a
stripe set, but it takes less of an error to loose all. All things
considered you need to have a problem to solve by striping prior to
doing it, and distributing multitrack files over several physcial drives
is also a way to increase playback performance if there is a problem to
solve.
> can i raid 2 x 15000 rpm drives together(2 x 20 or 2 x 40 gig)
> as my dedicated AA session files space or is that just overkill,
That would be a silly set up, three 5400 or 7200 rpm 120 GB drives is a
possibly less costly way to get same or better performance, assuming
wise deployment. You will always end up having some copying of files
from one physical drive to another, and consequently it is very wise to
have identical drives so that the faster need not wait for the slower.
> I plan to have maybe 2 x 250 gig 7200 or 10 000 drives raided
> as a dedicated digital vcr for HD tv recording,
I wouldn't raid them, but tv recording is a very fast way of making
large drives appear small and I don't really know what the bandwidth
requirement is for recordign hdtv.
> a small system drive 20-40gig just for installed stuff,
No, you will be wasting a valuable drive bay on a drive that will be a
bottleneck, three drives is a good idea, but preferably identical or at
least similar. Put that old drive in a USB 2.0 box and use it for
project backup instead.
> another 80-250 gig for normal storage.
Yes, you may need storage space when you want to do TV recording, so 750
GB unformatted is not unreasonable.
> Any ideas for best way to configure this stuff? minimum I'm
> thinking is sep small sys drive, sep AA drive/raided or not,
> sep bigass drive for TV recording, and sep general storage
> drive so thats minimum 4 or more.
Three 200 GB drives will probably be the optimally cost efficient setup.
> wireless keyboard (ultra flat touch keys like on bank atm's
> sort super silent DO THESE EXIST YET IF SO PLEASE TELL ME
> WHERE AND WHAT CALLED?)
A wireless keyboard is called too slow and too sloppy ...
> and wireless optical mouse with extra side buttons
But a wireless mouse can be an ergonomic advantage, agreed.
> can y'all fill me in on scsi,
Too costly.
> im told the 14k rpm drives need a scsi
> controller or osmething?
Yes, and thus it gets to be about a very different and very costly mobo.
You do not want a disk controller on the PCI bus on a DAW.
> also, 64bit cpus? what the hell does that mean
Currently nothing of relevance considering the current software. What it
means is that the memory allocation space can be 64 terabytes rather
than 4 GB, and that is rapidly getting to be of importance for database
servers and terminal servers.
> im thinking the fastest intel cpu wht is it 3 gig these
> days with cache, or does anyone know how much dual cpu
> will cost (and what needs to go with it)
It is unknown to me whether Audition actually will benefit from multiple
CPU's, generally the required CPU versions (XEON) and mobo's are too
costly to make sense.
> motherboard with 800fsb
Asus P5P800 is modestly priced. I think your specs are extreme and that
your quests are of the "it would be nice to be able to" type. Life is
not about using as much money on chasing specs as possible, but rather
about getting good results. To do that, you also need to have resources
to get some reasonable audio equipment. Leave all the video concerns out
of it, I have understood them to be about leasure, and live with
recording the number of pixels that is possible with a good DAW.
I suggest this also because it may be problematic to try to make a
multitrack audio recording simultanously on the machine that records the
video in case "both combined" is the productivity quest. Just one reason
for not thinking that hdtv is very important on the machine is that it
is not very likely that you actually record hdtv with a camera.
> wondering bout the new audigy 2 zn platinum pro thing
In the audio context that is relevant here something Midiman is "more
like it" - example product, not the only possible choice. See also
http://www.pcavtech.com, Arny Krügers very interesting web site and a
good place to start learning more about sound cards. A budget card that
it appears will meet your demands is the Midiman 1010LT or similar model
from other manufacturer.
Kind regards
Peter Larsen
* My site is at: http://www.muyiovatki.dk *

Help on Setting up Xserve Raid

In our department we have three MacPro's, and one G5 Quad. We want to add an Xserve Raid to store and serve hi-res image files to each workstation. There is a company wide network (intranet) to which we have aready added the workstations, along with printers, however our IT people do not support the Mac platform and we are on our own as far as getting the Xserve Raid in the mix.
I am looking for advice as to how best to set it up and what sort of addition hardware or software we might need.
MacPro Mac OS X (10.4.8) 4gig ram
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.7)

I'd concur that it's generally a bad idea to use a production machine as a file server. OS X is fairly stable though. Worst case will likely be you'd loose the file server if an errant application hung up the finder. I can't remember the last time I've had an OS X box lock up solid.. though they do occassionally become unusable from the console.
If you're really budget constrained, put it on the tower. Just be careful about the Fibre controller. Apple has made PCI-X and PCI-E versions over the years.
As far as whos controller to buy, Apple's isn't just competative, it's a steal. It's a 2Gb/channel controller and it runs over Copper (not real fiber optic). You can find cheaper FC cards but they are 1Gb per channel. There are also 4Gb per channel cards.. these will generally fall back to 2 or 1 Gb per channel but they are VERY expensive. FC has come down a lot but it's not unusual to find cards with the same specs as Apple's for twice the price. At least one of our sys admins puts Apple's cards in his x86 Linux servers because they are the cheapest cards he can get. (they also work in Windows 2003 machines since they are just rebranded cards from another vendor.. we're running one in a Dell next door.. as a test for the XSan we're building).

Advice on set up for a mixed Airport network with guest network.

Hi,
The manuals on the Airport Extreme and Airport Networking are more technical than my knowledge base can follow. I would like advice on how to set up a new network with a mixture of wired and wireless devices and some Windows equipment as well as os x based macs. the following: dsl broadband from Talk Talk to be managed by a Draytek Vigor 120 external modem connected to an Airport Extreme. I want to connect a Nov 2009 iMac (with Mountain Lion installed), Apple TV and xbox by ethernet cable to the 3 ethernet ports on the Extreme, but also to connect wirelessly one Windows 7 laptop, one Macbook Pro (2010) (again running Mountain Lion) and various other wireless devices like an iPad 2, iPhones etcetera, with all devices being part of one network run under one SSID and able to access the internet, and the 3 computers being able to fileshare with each other. On my current Windows created network which I am abandoning for reasons I won't go into here, if more than one of the computers is switched on, I can use any one of the computers to access information in any of the shared folders on the other computers - via Finder in the case of the macs - and I need this going forward. I would also like to create a Guest network as I have a lot of people come to stay who need internet access. To further complicate things, I would also like to add in an Airport Express wirelessly onto the network and link that to a hi-fi to give me the ability to play my iTunes library (situated on my iMac at present) on the hi-fi.
I appreciate that there are similar questions but I have not really found an answer that exactly nails my situation.
Thanks in advance.

It is not really an issue of how many clients can the iMac serve, but more about the volume of traffic you are processing or data the database application needs to serve. We have a Mac hardware that is a good 6 years or more old running OSX Server and supporting 20/30 clients without any problems.
One idea you may like to consider.
Don't run the VPN on the mac, get a router or separate dedicated networking box that provides that purpose. Then it will talk the load of any networking issues and external attacks. It can also provide other networking services for you such a DHCP, firewall, DNS, internet gateway, etc. They cost less next to nothing and are easy to install.
When you need to get something faster, look for a second hand xerve - we use them all the time. They have the advantage of have fast and very reliable discs, also you can raid the disks and hot swap them for backup purposes,
Finally, moving from one machine to another is each with things like carbon copy. But you cannot have the same licence for OSX server running twice, so you will need to install normal OSX on the iMac once you have done the move.
As for can you easily move from a imac to mac pro, sure not to hard to do.

Advice on setting up a RAID

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