External HD Raid?

I just got a 1TB external drive that has two 500GB drives available as Raid 0 or 1.
Will using it as Raid 1 cause problems writing/reading media for video editing (and ProTools etc for that matter)?

WRT to ProTools: when I last asked a ProTools rep about RAID, he said that ProTools does not qualify RAID configurations. Multitrack audio needs the disk to do lots of SEEK operations (head movement) rather than long high speed transfers. RAID 1 is a mirror, and writing operations would mean that both disks had to seek and finish writing before the operation was "complete." That might take longer than just writing to a single disk. Reading back should not be a problem.
On another note: a while ago I set up a software Raid 1 mirror in OSX 10.3, and from time to time, one of the two disks would not mount for some reason (turned out to be a bad disk), but there was no message, no warning, no nothin' unless one noted that one of the drives was not mounted. When the drive was subsequently reconnected, the RAID 1 software would busily recopy everything. So if you do RAID 1 the drives, keep an eye on things.
What would I do? I would not raid them at all, but use something like SuperDuper to do nightly incremental backups, and if I'd just finished tracking or capturing some critical footage, do extra manual "smart" backups right then and there before I shut down. That way, there is zero performance penalty. To set that up with your 1TB external drive, set it up as a JBOD (just a bunch of disks).
The other option is to just try it out: set up a Raid 1, capture some high rate video (say, HDV converted to ProRes 422 or something) and see how much behind you get on capture; then track some audio: as many tracks as you envision simultaneously recording.
I have a MacPro Intel 2.66 2xCore 2 (whatever it's called), and I routinely track and play back at least 24 tracks simultaneously on a single FW800 Mercury Elite Pro 250GB drive. I manually back up to a second older Wiebetec2x250 drive in a box.
Eddie O

Similar Messages

Advice on external MIRROR RAID

Looking to get an external MIRROR RAID for my Mac.
What would you guy recomend?
The 1TB MyBook Pro by Western Digitial looks good,
What are people using? anyone using Lacie?
R

just a thought, there may or may not be issues with this idea.
how about using a vault for one of the backups, or just backing up the Aperture library file, containing all of your managed images. onto one of the external HDD's.
next, simply make a copy of the currect Aperture library with a new name, open that new copy library in Aperture, then move the entire library to being referenced on the other external drive.
or better yet, if you can take the space hit of having this on both external drives, having the full aperture library file on each, as well as the referenced library. and have double backups on each RAID setup.
with these two type of backups, you will be able to restore the entire library, if that is a good solution at the time, or if you are in a hurry for a specific project, you can simply find that project in the referenced files.
I don't think that would be a super difficult process to have a really efficient backup system, it will take awhile, double the time of a single backup, but will give you all the options you may want.
honestly, if it were me, I would just backup the Aperture library file periodically to each Raid volume, as Library files can still be opened up right in finder, using the Show Contents comand, and maybe even Vaults can as well? I wouldn't be suprised if they could. need to do a little more research on that, if a vault file can be opened just like a library file, then you really shouldn't have to worry about restoring the whole vault if you were in a hurry and just find the photos you need at the time. and eventually do a full restore.

Can't search external drives (RAID, FW), can't eject

Hello,
I'm posting a link to my original post because i'm having a lot of trouble figuring this out, and perhaps someone here has some thoughts. ANY help would be appreciated.
Brief overview: i cannot do a search on any of my external drives - RAID, FW, or USB - which makes for a very inefficient workflow. From what i've been able to figure out so far, it seems like it's an issue with Spotlight trying (but failing) to index the drives, which runs me into the other problem: when trying to eject any of these drives, i get the "this drive is in use and cannot be ejected. Try quitting apps and trying again" even if none of them are in use.
I tried the Spotlight/Privacy add-then-delete option and get an error saying i "cannot add this drive because of an unknown error". I tried to force indexing with an app called Highlight. I Repaired permissions. I did a clean erase & install. LaCie tech support wasn't any help. No dice for any of these.
Running OS 10.5.8, PPC G5
Here is the link to my original post:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2103582&tstart=0
thank you very much for any help
Gardy

Sounds like a corrupted OS install then, or you need to trash the preferences for spotlight. I've no idea how to do that, but might fix it if you've not selected these externals to not be searched with spotlight.
Jerry
Message was edited by: Jerry Hofmann

Have a LaCie external 2big RAID drive; two 1T drives in RAID 0 configuration (striped). Drive works perfectly as one big 2T external disk but Mac Installer (Lion - App Store download

Have a LaCie external 2big RAID drive; two 1T drives in RAID 0 configuration (striped). Drive works perfectly as one big 2T external disk but Mac Installer (Lion - App Store download & Snow Leopard DVD) refuse to install OS X Lion or OS X Snow Leopard on RAID drive.
Previous RAID - two 500g's in RAID 0 had SnowLeopard/Lion installed and worked just fine as bootable drive.
Help!

Keep in mind a RAID 1 only protects you from hardware failure of one of the drives. It does not protect you if the hardware raid/chip set decides to take a vacation. Also, if FCP corrupts a file, it is written as corrupt to both drives.
I'm a big fan of separate but equal. Two drives. One goes to the site, the other remains at the hotel. At night, you back up the site disk to the the hotel disk. If something happens to the computer and the disk at the site the next day, you at least have the material back at the hotel.
eggs. baskets. that sort of thing.
good luck.
x

What is the best way to set up my RAID? (8Core MacPro with 2x1TB HDD) + (1x2TB External G-RAID)

EQUIPMENT:
Spring 2011 MacPro OSX-10.6.8
8-Core (2 x 2.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon)
Memory: 16GB 1066 MHz DDR3
RAID:
PCI Slot:          Slot-4
Hardware Version:          2.00
Firmware Version:          E-1.3.2.0
Expansion ROM Version:          0018
Shutdown Status:          Normal shutdown
Write Cache Enabled:          Yes
+
2TB G-Technology G-RAID External Hard Drive
2 x Firewire 800, 1 x eSATA, 1 x USB 2.0
Self Powered DC-IN
I know RAID basically lets different drives work together to work more efficiently, especially with large files.
I use my MacPro for video editing for motion pictures, using both Final Cut and Avid Media Composer (also have Adobe Premier because it came with CS5, but have yet to try it). I also use ProTools to score the films.
QUESTION:
I would like to know what you amazing MacPeople think I should do. I know there are multiple setups for RAID, and I obviously intend on one day having all 4-hard drive bays in use, but only ordered 2 initially when I built it. I also have the G-RAID external. I am in a position where I could partition my G-RAID external to backup both the hard drives, but I have only been using it as a way to bring my media with me when I was going to edit in the lab, but now I do everything at home. I would like to keep it as my travel drive, but let me know what you guys think. I obviously want to put it to the best use possible. I have a 500GIG slow external that I can use too, but I want to get my processor performance as fast as possible. When I edit now, it seems like I am not getting the full potention of my $7,000 MacPro (+ the $1000 Display).
Thank you in advance for your insight.
-RaphSai

I think you got no rsponses because the question you asked is too broad.
The single biggest performance payback on a Mac Pro (that is not compute-bound and has enough RAM) is to establish a Boot Drive -- with System, Library, Applications, and the hidden unix files on its own drive.
This keeps Mac OS X Virtual Memory system from wrecking the performance of regular file access -- whether you have the User files on a RAID or not.
Most Mac OS X Applications are built like pre-paged paging files. They are similar to the stuff already on the Boot Volume, and some are cranky if they are not on the Boot Volume.
As Mac OS X runs, and applications run, they take a different path through the software and find that the code needed to do a certain function is not present, and must be "paged" in.
You want that activity not to interfere with reading big Source files or writing big Destination files. Mac OS and Applications "snacking" moves the drive heads away -- and they take 20 milliseconds to get where they are going, a spin or two of the Hard drive at 10 milliseconds a spin to read, and 20 milliseconds or so to get back to work. All that is dead time before you can get more data to proceed.
Next is to set it up so that reading Source files does not compete with writing Destination files, such as having a separate Volume for destination files.

External SATA RAID no longer works after 10.5.5 update

After updating to 10.5.5, my external RAID (Sbox) (RAID 10) is no longer recognized – The SATA card is functioning correctly – I can attach a single external SATA drive without problem – all ROM has been updated (working with Sonnet) and we confirmed the proper operation of the card. When the system is attached to the external RAID (with port replicator in enclosure) the card reports an error (both green and amber steady lights) and no activity on the transfer lights. Worked great under 10.5.4 on PowerMac. Any ideas??

It seems as though the problems are multiplying. Other programs are acting funny now - I had to force quit iTunes yesterday and then the Finder froze. Keyboard response was nil, so I couldn't Force quit the Finder, so I had to resort to more drastic measures. It took two reboots to get things running again. I'm going to review some other threads to see if there are any clues there, then probably wipe the hard drive and do a clean install if nothing else seems to address the issue.

HELP ! Two SATA drives in an external enclosure RAID ZERO. Need data recovery.

What a nightmare !     My neighbor died from esophageal cancer and the funeral is in one week. He left behind a G5 2.5 DP tower with a dead motherboard, and he put the two 640 GB SATA drives in an Other World Computing external enclosure Mercury Elite Pro Dual) weeks before he expired. He got access to these drives in this enclosure. (External RAIDs are a no-no).
His grieving wife wants pictures extracted from the drives. There is no known back up and the G5 tower cannot be found.
When connecting the external enclosure by FW800 or USB3, the need to format flag pops up. Disk Utility shows one 1400 GB drive "unformatted".    The DIP switches on the enclosure are set to RAID 0.   Several data recovery programs find files, but of course any jpg over 50kb looks like venetian blinds, Tried Data Rescue 3, and the drive depicted as 1280 GB does not divide using expert features and the command key, thus a RAID SET for emulation cannot be formed. See here: See here: http://www.prosofteng.com/blog/recovering-data-from-a-apple-raid-using-data-resc ue-3-by-prosoft-engineering-2/
What to do now to recover jpg's intact and ASAP ?
1. Try another enclosure ?
2. Insert these drives into my personal G5 tower ?
3. Try different data recovery software ?
4. Which software other than Data Rescue will recover from two drives in one external enclosure believed to be RAID ZERO ?
Thank you.

Yes, if and when the tower can be located and retrieved.   In one communication it was described as a G4, in another, a G5.
Turns out that a single external drive was found, so suspect that is the boot drive. In the mean time, am doing an emulated recovery (two sets) using two converter boxes to isolate the two SATA drives, assuming RAID 0 and 32kb striped,   The two sets and because the drive order is unknown.   The first recovery is almost completed.
BTW, OWC rep stated that the two drives cannot be read in their dual SATA enclosure. The rep stated that the drives would have to be reformatted while in thier enclosure, then use. Tried two enclosures to see if they would read the drives independently, and one brand had a silly interface.   One has to put in two "dummy drives" (or ones in which the data is not important) and then convert the electronics (reset switch + power button) to RAID 0.

Using Time Machine to Backup an External Drive (RAID 1)

Is it possible to backup an external drive to another external drive using Time Machine in Mountain Lion?
The following diagram describes what I want to do. I am basically trying to use Time Machine as an external RAID 1 system. However, I don't want to buy a RAID 1 box. I want to have control of TWO OR MORE time machine setups. I don't want to backup my OS every time. I simply want to backup one external drive to another external drive. The drives are 2TB each, so the advice to buy a big hard drive to back everything up on won't work. Also, I am often swapping drives and would like to use this system for all of my projects and all of my drives. Any help would be great. Thanks for your time.
NOTE: I am on Lion and wanted to know if this was possible before upgrading.

To be clear, TM can back up your external drive perfectly well, provided it's in MacOS format. What it can't do is back up the external drive alone to one destination, and everything else to a different destination.
As for what you should use instead of TM, I don't really have an opinion. SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner are well regarded. You need to make some decisions about backup strategy before you choose a backup method. TM makes incremental backups, so you can revert to any of several earlier versions of a file. Those third-party products can do that too, though not as efficiently as TM. Also bear in my mind that a single backup is inadequate. You need more than one backup to be safe, and to be truly safe, at least one backup must be stored off-site at all times.

How should I Set Up My New External G-Raid?

Just received my new GR42000 2TB G-Raid Drive, but before even turning on the unit I began to read the manual PDF that came with the drive.
I want to use this unit with my new iMac and also with my HP PC which has video files that I'd like to access from time to time. I was instructed to reformat the drive for "Cross Platform Support"
Questions:
1) is this needful for extracting my video files.
2) Will using the Fat32 MSDOS format restrict my editing abilities within Final Cut Express 4HD.
3) Does the file extensions from the PC have to be converted, or is this what is done when they are transfered from internal to external.
I will be using this G-Raid for storing Video and Music Files exclusively and working 95% of the time on the iMac.
I also read in the manual that a software exists "MacDrive" for install and a cost, which I could not find, to help converge the two systems to work between each other.
I want to start off correctly and avoid transfering files and then later have to reformat and loose all the time spent doing so.
I'd appreciate advice from others who have already worked through the process.
I hope I've provided enough information, if not I'll await instructions.
Thanks, Dan

Hi Dan
I think that the problem is that users in this section of the forum (including myself), do not use Final Cut Express. Or again including myself, dabble all that much with windoz.
While MS-DOS FAT-32 is the ideal Format for sharing files Cross Platform, it has a 4GB single file size limit and may not be the best for storing and working on Final Cut Express files.
Examples:
For cross platform sharing of music, photo's. movie's and files under 4GB, I use an External HD the is set up Master Boot Record/MS-DOS FAT-32.
For backups, Time Machine and Bootable Cloning I use a different External HD that is set up GUID Partition Table/Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
So sorry, but I can not say exactly which would be the best solution for your multi facetted case. I suspect that GUID/Mac OS Extended is better for rendering and editing, but then you will need something on the windows side for reading and writing to that.
Finally I think that you should pop over to the Final Cut Pro section of this forum and ask the Final Cut Pro guru's the tougher questions. > http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=939
Dennis

External Firewire RAID problem

My G4533 connects via Firewire to a dual drive external enclosure via Firewire. The two identical drives in the enclosure are configured via OSX's software RAID as mirrored drives. I can connect fine but if I wait a while after connecting the RAID becomes inaccessable. I can be working in Photoshop, for instance, and I will access a file on the RAID and start working on it but when I later go to save the changes, it will just hunt and not find the drives. Or, if I leave the computer alone for a while and then go back and try to access the RAID it won't find it again. This is VERY random. It used to be much worse when "sleep" was involved in any form, computer, monitor, etc. I think I've turned off all the sleep and energy savers. How can I tell? Any ideas?

Anyone????

Mac Pro External/ Internal RAID for video

I'm going to purchase a Mac Pro for use in video editing/capture. Use of Mac RAID card with internal drives (1TB) seems a good way to host applications and protect data, perhaps RAID 0+1. This could be a good starting point but I'm unsure if there would be sufficient bandwidth to also support HD video capture with some data protection and later editing. Probably start wi Canon Vixia HD camcorder and AVCHD files, but video could come from anywhere.
Thought of adding an external RAID system such as the CalDigit HDOne. Questions:
1. Can both the CalDigit and Mac RAID cards be used in the same Pro system?
2. Might it be better to use SW RAID with the internal Mac drives and use the CalDigit HDOne for manipulating the video data?
I'm a beginner here with video editing - frank answers will be appreciated!

i still don't see any advantage to apples expensive raid card where you can only use apple drives.
the question of total internal bandwidth of the 6 internal sata ports came up in a recent thread and the resulting figure seems to be 2000 MB/s for all 6.
And hard drives in the MacPro are not hot-swappable, RAID or not.
The CalDigit HDOne is pretty. But it doesn't seem to support RAID 10. Like me, you would like to at least experiment with RAID 10. But it does do 6. It seems to ship with only one cable. Peanuts i suppose, but there are most probably two ports on the enclosure and you would need two cables to use 8 bays. They do offer 30 day satisfaction guarantee though. Seems expensive to me. I'm probably missing something.
i just purchased a;
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Highpoint%20Technologies/RR2314/
and a;
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sans%20Digital/TR5MB/
i figure that is more efficient to maximize port usage per purchase, i.e. 5 bays per port instead of 4.
The rocket 2314 does do 10 but not 6. And has a 3 year guarantee.

External storage (Raid 0/1) video editing

Hi
I have a macbook pro with about 400GB (and growing) of home made videos of my kids (which are also growing).
I currently backup my mac (including videos) to an external HD using Time Machine.
I want to get these movies off my MBP HD but still want redundancy and still want easy access to videos for editing.
I currently use iMovie but am considering moving to Final Cut.
My proposed solutions are:
NOTE: Hard Drives in all solutions will be 7200RPM.
A. Get a Raid 1 HD (Probably 4TB which will give me 2TB worth of videos). Will performance be good enough?
B. Get a Raid 0 HD (2TB) - Do I need this for the performance or will SOlution C suffice?
C. Get a std HD (2TB).
From what I read, Both FCP and iMovie will work *well* (i.e. not just ok) with an external drive (assuming you get one with reasonable performance).
Can someone confirn that?
In all the above solutions (including solution A -since both drives are still in the same enclosure), I will need to back up the drive.
Is there anyway to make Time Machine do the job?If not, I will probably use Carbon Copy Cloner unless someone knows a better program.
Finally, any suggestions for the drives? G-Technology seems to get a lot of attention...especially for their Raid drives. I am thinking about that one.
Thanks in advance for your response(s)

A single HD (soln C) will work fine IF your video isn't highly layered and/or doesn't use multicam, etc etc. For a "typical" small video there is no need for any RAID but if things get complex enough you may need some form of RAID and if you start playing with 2k or 4k and that kind of thing then you need fast everything. Sadly there are no "roll your own" enclosures with Thunderbolt yet but you could start with a good HD like a WD Black drive if you do reasonably simple stuff like most folks and then, if you find it wanting in the future you can always incorporate it into a RAID. I always say "buy drives in pairs because every drive needs a backup..."

External Storage; Raid

Q1>
I am sure this is a 101 question, and the answer exists somewhere, but I am forever lazy
How do you setup an external hard drive (either USB or FW) "cross-platform" for MS Windows and OSX?
I want a media storage system for keeping large video files. The source material may come from multiple computers on these two platforms. I need to exchange data from platform/computer to platform/computer.
Q2>
If you setup a RAID on multiple USB storage devices on one Mac, can you then attach the RAID to another Mac and retain it's configuration and data?
This solution is for media storage that will be used between 3 different Macs.
Mahalo Nui Loa for any assist!
Beavis2084

Obviously above I meant that I have a MacBook Intel Core-Two Duo running 10.6.

Using the SATA internal connection for an external SATA RAID drive

DP2G G5
THis RAID case:
http://wiebetech.com/products/rt5.php
has an SATA interface on it. Can I snake the internal cable outside somehow & plug it into this case? I can't spare a PCI slot for an SATA card. If not I'll just use the FW800, but it'd be cool to have SATA speeds.
DP2G G5 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

THis RAID case:
http://wiebetech.com/products/rt5.php
has an SATA interface on it. Can I snake the
internal cable outside somehow & plug it into this
case? I can't spare a PCI slot for an SATA card.
If
not I'll just use the FW800, but it'd be cool to
have
SATA speeds.
DP2G G5
Mac OS X (10.4.5)
Why would you want to spend $1700 on a SATA enclosure
and then be "cheap" on the SATA host adapter to run
it? This expensive 5 bay uses FW800 or SATA. Why not
use FW800 if you don't have a SATA host adapter.
I'm not trying to be cheap here. As I said, I have no PCI slots available. I use Pro Tools HD3 & all my slots are full. I will use FW800 if needed, but speed of SATA would be great.
WiebeTech has a $59 SATA card with one port or
FirmTek has a two port for $99 or a 4 port for
$139.95. Get a external SATA host adapter with direct
connect capability for this enclosure. Or if that is
too much get a 5 bay Fusion 500P for $500 and a
separate card. If you have a new PowerMac G5 made
after Oct 2005 then no PCI slots are available and
you will need the Sonnet PCIe Tempo E4P:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/article
s/sonnet/e4p/
Have fun!
DP2G G5 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

USB 3.0 External Powered Raid Drops when computer sleeps

I have a New 27" Imac:
27-inch iMac
Part Number: Z0MS
With the following configuration:
PROCESSOR     065-C0PK     3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
MEMORY     065-0638     8GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM-2X4GB
I installed 32GB of Crucial Memory.
HARD DRIVE     065-C0X7     768GB Flash Storage
GRAPHICS     065-C099     NVIDIAGeFrc GTX 680MX 2G GDDR5
MOUSE     065-0662     MAGIC MOUSE+MAGIC TRACKPAD
APPLE KEYBOARD     065-0664     Apple WL Kybd (English)+UG
COUNTRY KIT     065-0718     COUNTRY KIT
I have a 2Big Quadra USB 3.0 6T Raid external drive ,that has it's own power, drops out of the Finder when the computer goes to sleep. It is connected directly to the Imac and not to a hub. Only way to have it stay is to NEVER Sleep

Check your Energy Saver preferences. Uncheck the option to put drives to sleep when possible. See if that helps.

External HD Raid?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for