Best RAID setup for me?

Hi
Harm has advised me - and everybody else - to go RAID! So I am about to investigate a bit before I take the big step...
My MOBI supports (according to website) RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10. I think - after reading a lot about it - that I could be tempted to chioose RAID 10 - I have 2 1,5 TB disks allready - so I thought about buying another two with same size and set it up as RAID 10 - because as Wikipedia says:
RAID 10
RAID 1+0 (or 10) is a mirrored data set (RAID 1) which is then striped (RAID 0), hence the "1+0" name. A RAID 1+0 array requires a minimum of four drives – two mirrored drives to hold half of the striped data, plus another two mirrored for the other half of the data. In Linux, MD RAID 10 is a non-nested RAID type like RAID 1 that only requires a minimum of two drives and may give read performance on the level of RAID 0.
What about that? Good or bad? I don´t know if my MOBO supports 1+0 or is 1+0 and 10 the same thing?
This is my MOBO: http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Spec.aspx?ClassValue=Motherboard& ProductID=2988&ProductName=GA-EX58-UD4
Morten

Bryan and Morten,
Can you please provide me with a link how to do the softmod on GTS250? I'm not into posiiton to purchase GTX285 at the moment so, I'll give the 'soft mod' option a shot before I decide which to upgrade first - the GPU or the 6 gigs of RAM i have in my system.
My misfortunes with Adobe/AVCHD are the exact same ones experienced by Morten - even a sinle layer of avchd content in the timeline stutters in both the source monitor and the outcome monito in CS4 and is pain to edit for that reason. Try to add a single video effect (like colour correction) or even a signle transition and ... oh, boy! the editing becomes hell and I start feeling sorry that I did not go for Canon HV40 camcroder that shoots HDV on those good old casettes.
Back to your question Bryan regarding the allocation of hdd - this is the advice I got from Harm on the topic. Also included here is advice on which drives to set in Raid 0 in priority order. Hope this helps:
System with 3HDD
C: OS & programs
D: page file, media cache and renders/previews plus miscellaneous
E: media and exports
System with 4HDD
C: OS & programs
D: Windows page file and renders/previews plus miscellaneous
E: original media
F: media cache and exports
Alternative suggestion:
C: OS & Apps
D: pagefile, temp files (Windows), miscellaneous and exports.
E: media
F: projects and rendered/scratch files
Which to put first on Raid 0?
1. Media cache and renders/previews is useful to put first if you do a lot of scrubbing and previewing.
2. That leaves media in the middle.
3. Exports would be last on my list to put on the raid. Export is a one-way street and time is not really critical.

Similar Messages

Creating the best RAID setup for my MacPro using FCP

I have a MacPro, 2 x 3GHz Dual Core, 16GB ram, 4 x 500GB drives and I work in FCP 5.1.4 and with my Hardware setup I feel it should be faster and I've been wanting to set up a RAID but not sure how to do it, or the best way way to do it.
Out of the 4 drives I have, Drive one is my main drive (boot drive, apps etc.) Drives (2 & 3) which is a TB combined, I'd like to turn those into a RAID) to speed up rendering, editing etc. In FCP and Motion. Drive 4 is where I keep all my working files.
My files are backed up regularly onto external harddrives and kept offsite.
Can I leave everything I have on my entire system the way it is and just turn Drives 2 & 3 into a RAID that's best for this application? People who work in VIDEO I know do this all the time to speed things up but I can't find the steps for the best way to do this. Bits and pieces all over the place but I can't put this puzzle together.
Can you point me in the direction in how to do this?
As I'm doing this is there anything I should be careful about?
Please help me understand this process.
Just in case you need to know what kind of drives I have here's the info:
Capacity: 465.76 GB
Model: ST3500641AS P
Revision: 3.BTA
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk1
Bay Name: "Bay 1"
OS9 Drivers: No
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
Volumes:
Startup Drive:
Capacity: 465.44 GB
Available: 367.86 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s2
Mount Point: /

My advice would be 'yes' to what you are saying... with the exception of the Softraid stuff - not that I think its wrong, but I've never used it, so I can't comment if you need it or whether the Mac OSX raid is sufficient - but others here say they prefer it so fair enough. You can see some comparisons here http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/softraid/351/
amug always have indepth benchmarks of stuff.
I wouldnt call myself an FCP guru, but I think that your suggestion of putting the FCP scratch disk and client, video files on the raid are the best idea. The scratch folder is essentially where the temp-rendered clips go, so its audio and video - you want that folder to be on a really fast volume. You also want your source video files to be on a really fast volume, so they can be streamed fast enough to play in realtime too when playing unrendered areas, or building a preview.
Some might say in FCP you get bast performance when your scratch disks and video files are on seperate disks. Thats totally true, so it can read from one disk and write to the other at the same time. But in your case you have a 3disk stripe, which is roughly 3x faster than either of your disks! So it would still be faster to have them all on the same stripe.
You can leave your FCP app on the sys drive, keeps things cleaner (drive1 for sys and appsm raid for data). You can keep your project files where ever you want, they're not very big and are kept in memory so dont affect performance at all. Though to stay clean I would keep it on the raid, so again the raid is for data, and you can back it up accordingly. The system drive is only for apps and system so you can back that up accordingly too (less frequently probably).
P.S. Technically your 'point 8' is inaccurate. After creating the raid you will not see drives 2,3 or 4. You will see only one 'volume' for all 3 drives. Overall your mac will have 2 'volumes': the system drive, and the stripe of 2,3,4. Physical drives and 'volumes' that mount in your OS are completely seperate. You can create multiple partitions in a single drive, or you can combine multiple drives into a single volume (e.g. using raid). But basically yes, you copy your client files back to the raid.
And remember, if any ONE of the disks in the stripe dies, you lose ALL of the data on the entire 1.5TB volume. So it is pretty important to backup regularly!!!!
(I dont wanna confuse you any more, but raid5 is a good option if you want more security and don't mind paying extra :P, you'll need more hardware for that, and more drives to make it worthwhile - but I would say skip that for now, as you can build your raid0 for free or almost free and use that until you think you need more)

Best RAID setup for Home Directories

Hi there,
I'm looking to upgrade our existing infrastructure which is 5 or 6 years old. We have an old Xserve RAID which has 4x 250Gb disks in a RAID 5 configuration which gives about 640Gb of storage for home directories. However the peak number of users has shot up to something like 85.
I want to be able to increase the storage space for home users but also to provide a RAID storage solution that has optimised performance for the number of users we now have.
Is there any kind of ratio or guideline to the kind of configuration/system I should be looking at? Can anyone offer any advice?
It's a gigabit ethernet network, so obviously I realise that performance is limited by that also.
Any help much appreciated.

OK, that helps a lot.
The CPU load on the server seems a little higher than I'd expect. What's the activity level of the RAID? Are the disks continually active? Are the fiber channel activity lights (the vertical columns of LEDs in the middle) all active?
That will help track the issue to the host system or the RAID.
If the disk activity lights are always busy then it may be an issue with the number of drives for the number of users, and more physical drives would help.
This could also be indicative of a too-full volume (RAID 5 volumes will degrade in performance over about 85% full. At 95% full performance may be excruciatingly slow).
If the fiber channel activity levels are high then the problem is the amount of disk access and your best bet would be to expand to the other half of the array (this will double the available fiber channel bandwidth between the host and the RAID).
If the RAID activity levels aren't high then it could be a network bottleneck on the server, in which case link aggregation could help - it isn't just for redundancy, it will load balance client traffic over the links, effectively increasing performance for clients.
You are right that if you try to expand the current volume with drives, the drives will be sized to 250GB, regardless of their physical capacity. For this reason you would need to build a new array on the other side of the RAID and copy the data over.
The ideal situation would be 14 new drives which you could build into two 7-disk arrays which are then striped on the host system.

Best RAID setup for MSI Z77A-G43

I currently have my desktop set up with an SSD as C: and 2 x 1TB HDD as D: in a RAID 1 configuration.
I'd like to add a second SSD to increase capacity of my C: drive. Ideally I'd like to set both SSDs at RAID 0. Would this be possible without having to rebuild the OS? Alternatively, could I configure them as JBOD without affecting the current installation?
Any help would be appreciated.
David.

Quote
I'd like to add a second SSD to increase capacity of my C: drive. Ideally I'd like to set both SSDs at RAID 0. Would this be possible without having to rebuild the OS?
don't think so, you have to combine them both and format after that before use it

Best RAID configuration for storing Datafiles and Redo log files

Database version:10gR2
OS version: Solaris
Whis is the best RAID level for storing Datafiles and Redo log files?

Oracle recommends SAME - Stripe And Mirror Everything.
In the RAC Starter Kit documentation, they specifically recommend not using RAID5 for things like voting disk and so on.
SAN vendors otoh claims that their RAID5 implementations are as fast as RAID10. They do have these massive memory caches...
But I would rather err on the safer side. I usually insist on RAID10 - and for those databases that I do not have a vested interest in (other than as a DBA), and owners, developers and management accept RAID5, I put the lead pipe away and do not insist on having it my way. :-)

Best Raid Configuration for a 8-1tb hhd server

Hi All,
I have been trying to figure out what would be the best raid configuration for my Windows 2012 essentials server. So I was wondering if I could get some advise on this. Here is what I would like to get out of this configuration.
I would like to split the 8-1tb drives into 2 VHD one with about 300gb for the OS to be installed on, and the rest to be use for storage. I want like to have good redundancy, fairly good read & write capabilities.
I will be using this server for a Small Web Page and Game Hosting, Email Exchange, Critical Application hosting.
I would like the ability to enlarge the overall raid storage by swapping out my 1Tb drives with 2Tb or larger as the need for more storage arises.
Any help would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks

You may be better of using Storage spaces and not using raid at all.
Robert Pearman SBS MVP
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What is the best RAID configuration for a MacPro as a Logic User?

There ought to be a universal answer to this question: what is the best RAID configuration for Logic Mac Pro users? I will be more specific.
I use Logic Studio, Reason, Ableton, and Motu Symphonic Instrument simultaneously.
I want to fail safe my precious audio files and improve performance as the system reads/writes data from multiple files, from audio tracks to digital samples.
I want to run video files simultaneously to do nifty audio soundtracking to video.
Here is the configuration I have in mind.
HD 1: OS and Logic Studio, Reason/Ableton samples etc. software (non-raid) (250 GB)
HD 2/3: MIrrored RAID set for AUDIO FILES (500 Gb identical pair)
HD 4: Video files / Bouncing (1 TB)
Makes sense right? A disk for reading software. A pair of 500 GB disks for reading/writing audio files and sessions in mirrored array. A 1 TB disk for video and bouncing. The main question I have is, for audio files only, is striped or mirrored better? 64K blocks the best? And are there any more details. I assume to do this in Disk Utility.

Well, both Mirrored and Striped have their pros and cons. If you use mirrored, it will offer no better performance than the spec'ed drive along with it's sata bus speed. The plus point is, if one drive goes down, you have the second as a backup as the complete contents of one drive are mirrored on the other.
With striped you will get a performance boost because all files (for example a single project) will get written across both drives and hence split the load on the drives and the SATA busses. The drawback is that you'll have to make sure you have a good, regular backup schedule in place because when one of the drives goes to drive heaven, you're going to be stuffed without a full backup of both drives.
Exactly what performance boost you'd get will depend on your project, number of files, size of files, fragmentation of files, track count etc. You may find it would be easier to use the 3 drives straight, with no raid and have:
HD 1: OS and Apps. No samples at all.
HD2: Audio Files for Logic projects
HD3: Reason, Ableton, Logic etc instrument sample library
HD4: Video and bouncing.
Which is what I ended up doing although I use HD4 as an interchangeable backup for HD1 and 2.
There is no universal answer to this as each must make their own choice based on their preferences and needs. Mirrored will give you full backup but on-site, in machine backup. Not much good if something untoward and drastic happens to the physical machine. I think a few people toy with striped RAID but fall on the side of using the drives straight, as in their projects they don't see a big enough gain over splitting the data across your 3 remaining drives without RAID. Studios that seriously consider raid often go out and get a dedicated raid that can offer more variations than raid 0 or raid 1 (Striped and Mirrored) and better throughput.
I hope this helps a little and not just added to the dilemma.

Best Multiprocessing setup for 24 Processor Cores & 64gb of RAM using new MacPro OSX 10.9.5.

Whats the best Multiprocessing setup for 24 Processor Cores & 64gb of RAM using new MacPro OSX 10.9.5.
I'm still getting an After Effects Warning: at the end of some renders saying "A frame failed to render using Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously.

Hi Szalam,
I'm using the latest After Effects (13.2.0.49)
See attached some screen grabs of my setup.

The best RAID level for video editing that has some form of redundancy?

I've been asked to help find the best solution for importing and editing large amounts of HDV (25 Mbit/s) video. However, those whom I am helping also want a level of redundancy that will allow a single drive to fail and their data to be preserved. So what I'm trying to figure out is the best RAID level (or levels) for their need. I'm fairly certain that either 0+1 or 10 is what I'm looking for, however the I/O performance differences between 0+1 and 10 aren't quite clear to me. If someone could explain that to me I would appreciate it. Additionally, if someone knows a better level than either 0+1 or 10 for the needs I described, please don't hesitate to let me know.

The difference between RAID 10 and RAID 0+1 is how the array is created.
RAID 0+1 creates a RAID from multiple RAID 0 arrays that are mirrored.
You can tolerate any number of drive failures in any one side of the mirror (that side of the mirror goes offline as soon as any one disk fails, so it doesn't matter how many other disks fail in the same array), but one drive failure on both parts of the mirror will trash your data.
RAID 10 creates a stripe of multiple RAID 1 mirrors.
In this setup you create RAID 1 mirror sets and stripe them together.
In this setup you can tolerate one disk failure in each element of the stripe.
For example if you have 6 drives you might create three mirrors of two drives each, and each mirror is then striped.
You can lose one drive in each mirror, but if you lose two drives in any mirror set, you're out of luck.
In both cases, though, you're not going to get the best usage out of the array since mirroring has a 50% overhead - meaning you're only going to get 50% of your total disk capacity as usable space.
With the XServe RAID, the RAID 5 performance is very good - good enough for your 25MB/sec throughput so I'd go with RAID 5 arrays, not RAID 0 or 1 on the XServe RAID itself.
Then, depending on your space requirements, you can either stripe or mirror them together for a RAID 50 or 51 array. In this way you gain the data redundancy of RAID 5 with better disk utilization than 10 or 0+1.
RAID 50 will give you the best performance (and the most usable space), RAID 51 will give you the best redundancy.
At the end of the day it's up to you to decide which format to use based on performance and usable space requirements.

Best disk setup for Premiere CS6

Hello,
I want to improve my disk setup for Adobe Premiere CS6 because I got long loading times.
My current setup:
Crucial RealSSD C300 60GB SSD for the program
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB HDD for media and Media Cache Files
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB HDD for projects and exports
My planed setup:
new: Kingston SSDNow V300 120GB SSD for the program
Crucial RealSSD C300 60GB SSD for Media Cache Files
2x Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB HDD with Raid 1 for media
new: Seagate Barracuda 2 TB HDD for projects and exports
Is this the best solution to improve the performance?
Thanks
Tim

What is the advantage of getting an extra HDD for the exports?
None from a performance point of view.
And should I use the 60GB SDD for the Media Cache Files?
That is much too small. Depending on your projects, you will need at least 256 GB, but possibly even more.
With only 350 GB of media and projects, my media cache is already 72 GB.
Read Harm's articles on disk setup, raids and balanced systems here: Tweakers Page

What's the best RAID solution for my iMac / MacBook?

I think it's time I invested in a larger backup hard drive, and for data security I'm looking at 2-drive RAID devices. Is the Lacie 2Big Network good for this purpose? http://www.lacie.com/uk/products/product.htm?pid=10953
What's the reliability and speed really like on such devices?
I have a 1Gbit switch that I could attach a network storage drive to, and the idea of having a public ftp area on it sounds quite cool and useful, anyone know just how secure it is?
What about replacing drives in these things - is it just a case of taking existing hard drive out of a caddy and putting a new one in? (same type, size and speed, presumably)
At work we have some dinosaur Dell servers that have big hardware RAID arrays in them, I've only just started using them myself but can see how versatile the concept is.. are there any drawbacks to having a small home hardware RAID setup?
Thanks!

If you are not limited to NAS, take a look at CalDigit for a great eSATA/FW800/FW400/USB RAID 1/0 external drive.
http://www.caldigit.com/CalDigit_VR/ , we will get one soon.
AFAIK, the CalDigitVR connects using either eSATA, FireWire 800, 400, and USB2.0. The RAID is configurable as performance (RAID 0), protected (RAID 1), or SPAN. The CalDigit's products are used by serious individuals, photographers, movie studios, etc. and are as bulletproof as you can get.
Everything is swappable (including the fan assembly) and can be daisy chained through FireWire port when out of capacity. If know you are using iMac, but if you have a MacPro, you can use their SATA kit to speed up to 200 MB/s !!!.
In the past, RAID protection doesn't come cheap but neither does true peace-of-mind. There are other solutions to be sure, but none offer the longevity and flexibility of the Caldigit products. And the best part is CalDigitVR 500GB starts at only $399.

Best possible setup for the future

I am going to ask a generalized broad question. First some background, then I would appreciate your input.
Used mac desktops up until now. Primarily storage reasons. I am sending my daughter off to college this fall and decided to get our first laptop, nice zippy macpro 15". I have to say I'm very happy stealing this laptop from my daughter. I thought I would not want to do so much picture processing on such a limited screen, as I'm used to two landscape monitors.
The database for Aperture right now is almost 400 gigs. I used managed files. I initially thought about upgrading my old desktops to a new super powerful desktop in the next year of so, as I'm still using powermac PCs.
I wasn't going to consider a laptop as a serious contender for primarily the storage issue.
Enter thunderbolt.
Now I'm scratching my head and wondering about the potential to utilize this seemingly potential I/O as a game changer to the deal.
#1 - I'm not in a hurry. Time is on my side.
#2 - in the past, desktop Vs laptop was a no brainer to me. That gap has narrow now. The primary issue was screen space and storage, mostly storage/speed really.
#3 - speed gap from laptop to desktop is nominal at best from what I can tell, am I correct in seeing this now as not as clear an advantage of a desktop?
#4 - if I'm understanding thunderbolt right (and since time is on my side), I could potentially have a laptop with some lug around peripherals that would nearly make this like a desktop on the go. Sit down and plug into multiple monitors in a flash with RAID extensions, who knows what. Maybe then grab a raid cube and run with it to a place and essentially take my "desktop" environment with me. Am I thinking straight here or being a bit to idealistic? Seems like that it where Apple/intel is headed with this
#5 - managed Vs referenced. I've read a little about this debate and approach. I've only gone with managed and probably will do so, but in light of what I've said above, any comments?
#6 - backup. Always the biggie for me. backup. I love redundancy. I have time machine this and that thrown around in duplicity, copy over mirror drives here and there, and even put an extra drive or two in a neighbor's closet x2 a year just as an offsite backup in case of catastrophic loss like fire/theft. I'm not crazy over such a fragmented multiple approach, but haven't found what I consider a good alternative just yet to something simple, straightforward, and trustworthy. I'm hoping thunderbolt might lend a whole new ability to move quicker through backup scenarios. Thoughts? What are your approaches when you have a life's work of digital pics and videos and just can't stand the thought of ever ever losing them?
#7 - I would love to have an offsite online backup option for everything, seems that would solve so much of my backup stuff. But as a home user that is seriously into digital whatever, I haven't seem to run across something good as I've been limited to slow upload speeds. Until now. Enter FiOs. I can now(supposedly) do 32 up and down on the Fios, the fastest I think I will be able to get without going to a major business type connection. Does anyone have any knowledge of anything that would be a solid online backup option for 2TB or more of data on a revolving basis? I want to overshoot a bit as I seem to be picking up memory usage quickly with shooting in all RAW now and using higher density HD video. Opinions?
Having said all that, I hope what is coming across is that I'm looking at basically going from a guy who had an old powermac and found he is good at video, photos, and all things fun like that. Expanding into business sides of it slowly, seeming to have good luck, sending a daughter off to college introduced a surprising element to me of a powerful laptop, and now I'm grappling with onsite and offisite storage. Future expansion. thunderbolt potential.
I would appreciate some of you who have much more seasoned interactions with higher end equipment and can appreciate some of the details, if you could give some insight into what might work, might not, how to posture myself the best for future expansion and capabilities, etc. I'm not too worried about price. Obviously I'm a home user, so I don't have a corporate account. But dropping 10 - 20 grand in the next 2 or so years wouldn't be unreasonable if it were to posture me for the best potential use for many years.
Thanks,
Robert

TexasMan_Luvs_Hismac wrote:
The database for Aperture right now is almost 400 gigs. I used managed files. I initially thought about upgrading my old desktops to a new super powerful desktop in the next year of so, as I'm still using powermac PCs. I wasn't going to consider a laptop as a serious contender for primarily the storage issue.
#3: At the moment (until MPs are upgraded) the top new MBPs are stronger Aperture boxes than many Mac Pros are. IMO the first true desktop replacement (DTR) laptops. Stick to the stronger graphics options and I very, very strongly recommend the anti-glare display choice.
#5: Managed files are IMO not the way to go for many reasons, and certainly not on a laptop. I recommend using a Referenced-Masters-Library on the internal drive with Preview size set to be the size of your laptop display. Have two large external drives: one for Masters and Vaults and one for offsite backup of the other external.
So #6: Backup is easy, just add more off site drives for more redundancy and change them out frequently (at least weekly or every significant project). For images work mirrors tend to be a waste of drive space. Far more worthy is more frequent real offsite backup. Note that simple changeout of a 2-TB drive to the trunk of the car provides real backup against fire, theft and drive failure.
Originals should be backed up before import into Aperture or any other app anyway. A Managed-Masters-Library not only gets itself ridiculously large, having Masters in Vaults just makes Vaults huge and Vault backups slower, and therefore less likely to be done as frequently.
#4: Yes. Tbt may have some growing pains but I think your insight is accurate. However even without Thunderbolt using a Referenced-Masters-Library with Masters accessed over FW800 i/o is ok. Key is that the Library lives on an internal drive that is kept underfilled, which is easy once you use a Referenced-Masters-Library with Masters on external drives.
Personally I just ordered a 17" 2011 MBP with SSD and am replacing the optical drive with a 750 GB 7200 rpm OWC drive. The Referenced-Masters-Library will live on the SSD while Masters will initially live on the OWC drive then later get relocated to external archive drives.
#1 - I'm not in a hurry. Time is on my side.
Since you are using a Powermac now, I respectfully disagree. Life is short: get thee to a Sandy Bridge MBP asap This new MBP is literally what mobile Aperture users like me have been waiting for since v1.
HTH
-Allen Wicks

Best RAID configuration for combining external thunderbolt enclosures?

I'm looking at configuring two external Western Digital Thunderbolt Duo drive enclosures using Disk Utility's software RAID setup tool. Each enclosure houses two 2TB drives. I'm looking to get the performance of RAID 0 striping with the redundancy of RAID 1 mirroring. What I'm not sure of, and I hope someone can shed some light on, is how to combine the RAID sets to achieve my desired goal. As I see it, there are two possible ways to go about this.
The first would be to configure the master RAID set as mirrored, with the individual thunderbolt enclosures configured as striped sets. Example:
The second approach would be to configure the master RAID set as striped, with the individual thunderbolt enclosures configured as mirrored set. Example:
Can anyone tell me which is the better way to go about this? Are there advantages/disadvantages to either approach? Thanks for any insight you might have!

Start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
see the heading Nested (hybrid) RAID
The issue with striped RAID is that loss of one drive is devastating. Lose one drive and you lose it ALL.
They advocate you make a striped set of Mirrored drives. One failure and you're fine, as long as you don't have another failure before you fix it.
NB> RAID is not Backup -- you still need a backup.

Best Raid 0 for PS CS3 and Mac Pro

I am getting closer to ordering a new Mac Pro to run PS CS3 - and to drive 3 big Epson printers. I am leaning toward the dual-core 3.0 GHz as the results and speed for the 8 core with PS CS3 are still not known. It will have 6 to 8 GB of RAM (depends on my budget).
I want to make a machine that will do only PS CS3 - at the fastest possible rate. I have lots of other Macs for running other applications. I plan to order the Mac Pro with 1x 500MB hard drive - and add 2 smaller, but faster drives for the OS and for PS - and for the PS scratch/cache- and to put that on a Raid 0.
I am looking at getting 2 Raptor 150MB 10,000 RPM drives for the Raid 0. They can be small -maybe even just the 70MB versions -as I would only use them for booting OS and for running PS CS3. Images would be saved to a different disk. I have 10 external LaCie FW800 drives for image storage and backups. I will also use the 500MB drive that comes with the new Mac Pro for image storage - and maybe add a 4th similar 500 or 750MB drive for additional storage on the mac Pro itself.
My thought is that if I only have the OS and the PS on the Raid 0 a total failure would do little harm. I would not lose anything except maybe the image being worked on at the time of failure. The applications and OS could be rebuilt from the install CDs.
Is this a good plan? Is there another way to get maximum PS CS3 speed on the new Mac Pro?
Dual 2.7 G5, 2 intel iMacs, 1 MacBook, 1 Powerbook, 18 G4 Macs, 3 iPods Mac OS X (10.4.9) I teach Digital Photography clases - on Macs

Some considerations:
Ideally you want to use separate drives (or RAID volumes) for:
1. Mac OS X and Photoshop
2. Scratch space
3. Storage of images that you're processing
If you use a striped volume for the boot disk, then you'll have to keep another bootable disk to perform some firmware updates (firewire drives work well) - you'll want to do this anyway with a RAID 0...
Buy your RAM so that you can get the quad-channel performance...
If you are comfortable working inside the computer, you can also add a 5th/6th drive in the optical bay. To add one extra drive, you just need 5.25 drive mounting bracket. For two extra drives (or even 4) you can use this product:
http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_i d=158
I found that an 18" SATA cable with elbow connectors is the best... you'll also want a 6" SATA power adapter (4pin-15pin)
My suggestion would be to add a 5th hard drive to the Mac Pro. That way, you could use (1) 150 GB raptor as the boot/PS disk, and then created TWO striped RAIDs with the 4 remaining disks. Perhaps (2) raptors for a scratch stripe, and (2) disks for users/storage. If your storage needs are less than 300 GB, then get 5 raptors...
If your LF Epson printers are firewire, then you'll want each to be on it's own firewire bus - get additional PCIe firewire cards as needed.
All of the drive recommendations above assume that you're doing daily (or more often) backups of any RAID 0 stripes that you create...
EDIT:
On second thought, you might want to stripe the boot drive for better printing performance (waiting for OS to write to the spool)... so perhaps add a 6th internal SATA disk and have 3 unique 300 GB (striped) volumes.

XPS 2720 Question - best ssd setup for performance

Hi Guys
the 32gb msata on the motherboard that comes with the AIO, is this any good, want to upgrade ssd, do I keep msata but get larger or do I get rid of this and the 1tb sata 7200 and buy samsung 850 evo/pro and will this give me the best all round performance, interested what you think and what you would buy
next thing I will need is a dummies guide how to do this and i am not that technically minded,
1 important thing is I dont have recover disks and my backup/recovery does not work as it says I have corrupted environment, and dell does not detect my machine and when i input my service tag number it does not recognise that either.
what is going on,lol
regs
paul

The first thing you need is Windows 8.1 installation media, see here:
http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/download-microsoft-windows-and-office/download-microsoft-windows/download-windows-8-1-retail-and-oem-iso/
Get a 250-500 GB mSATA and get rid of the 32 GB SSD cache drive. I prefer Crucial in particular the MX200 but Samsung are good also:
http://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/compatible-upgrade-for/Dell/xps-one-2720
To install follow the instructions in the owner's manual to remove the mSATA mini-card:
http://ftp.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_desktop/esuprt_xps_desktop/xps-27-2720-aio_Owner%27s%20Manual_en-us.pdf
Change the SATA operation to AHCI and wipe the HDD using DISKPART → CLEAN ALL:
http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/ensure-you-have-the-correct-sata-configuration-in-the-bios-setup-for-your-configuration/sata-operation/
http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/cleaning-up-a-drive-format-vs-secure-wipe-ssd-and-hdd/
Install Windows using a local account without a password (so your new factory image doesn't have your Microsoft Account associated with it):
http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/a-clean-install-of-windows/a-clean-install-of-windows-8-1/windows-8-1-installation/
After installation of Windows you will need to install the system drivers (in the correct order):
http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/downloading-drivers-checking-hardware-ids-and-downloading-and-installing-dell-system-drivers-in-the-correct-order/driver-installation/
Installation of Dell Backup and Recovery will make a new recovery partition from the clean install.
You may then want to switch to a Microsoft Account.
You will then want to initialize the HDD and migrate the user directories to it:
http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/a-clean-install-of-windows/a-clean-install-of-windows-8-1/solid-state-drive-and-hard-drive-configuration/
You might want to look though the full guide (A Clean Install of Windows):
http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/a-clean-install-of-windows/a-clean-install-of-windows-8-1/

Best RAID setup for me?

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