Hard Drive configuration for speed

Question

I've got a question regarding the best hard drive configuration for my mac pro. I'm looking to increase the boot speed, application load speed and particularly the speed with which hard drive intensive photoshop processes complete. Right now I'm just using some normal SATA II drives. I'd appreciate it if you could give me some feedback on the various options I am currently considering.
-2x 64GB SSD in a RAID 0 for OS X and applications with some large SATA drives for storage
-4x 300GB VelociRaptor 10k RPM SATA HDD in a RAID 0
-2x 147GB SAS 15k RPM HDD in RAID 0 with some large SATA drives for storage
I am particularly in the dark about the controllers I'd use for each solution. Clearly, I would absolutely require a PCIe card for the SAS drives, but would there be a marked advantage to using a hardware RAID card for the SATA drives over the software RAID in OS X? Also, how easy is it to get the mac pro to boot off drives connected to a controller card rather than the standard setup? And lastly, if there is good reason to use a card, are there any in particular that you would recommend?
Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

2. No. Do not make two partitions unless you do not plan to use Boot Camp Assistant to install Windows on that partition. If you plan to create a Boot Camp partition then you must partition the drive as one Mac OS X volume. Boot Camp Assistant will then create the Windows volume.
3. This drive must be repartitioned and reformatted as follows:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to two. Use the graphic resizer to set the desired sizes for each volume as you want. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the first volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
7. Select the second volume you created and repeat Steps 4-6.
4. Now here I don't know what you think is your best option. You can buy any two hard drives you want. The ones I identified were only an example of what you could purchase for under $300. There are others, slightly more expensive, that would work, and you would still be under your $300 budget. The Samsung drives are good drives and reasonably priced, but they are just one of several alternatives. You should do some checking on your own before making your decision. I'm just giving some guidance, not trying to tell you what you should do. I've provided three sites where you can read reviews and benchmarks before you decide. You need to "own" your decision.
As for how you configure these two drives that's a secondary issue. I would recommend using them for backup. Two possible arrangements are a Mirrored or a Striped RAID array. A mirrored RAID array would create one volume that has a 1 TB capacity. Everything saved to that volume is essentially saved twice - once on one drive then a copy is mirrored to the other drive. This is not what you described in your Item 4. That's not how it works. Anything saved to the mirrored RAID array is saved the way I described it just above. It makes no difference where the files come from.
Now you can use the mirrored RAID array as a Time Machine backup drive if you want, but then you should not use it for other data storage. You would need the entire capacity as backup for both of the 500 GB drives you currently have. A mirrored RAID provides some data redundancy by having a copy of everything one each drive. Thus, if one drive fails the other drive still functions and your data backup is intact. Mirrored RAIDs are generally no faster than an individual drive that makes up the array.
The second suggestion was to make a Striped RAID array. This type of array produces one volume that is twice the size of the the two drives that make up the array. Thus, you would have a single volume that is 2 TBs in size. You can use this volume for your Time Machine backups also. Striped RAIDs do not provide any data redundancy. If one drive fails all the data stored on the RAID will be lost. However, Striped RAIDs are nearly twice as fast as either drive that makes up the array. This would give you very fast storage and backup.
You could also just leave the two drives to operate independently. Use on for Time Machine backups, use the other for more storage space.
Other possibilities abound. It's pretty much up to you to decide what will fit best into your needs today and in the future. Don't feel obliged to do what one person tells you. Five different users on the Discussions will give five different opinions.
I suggest you educate yourself a bit on backup and restore by reading the FAQ about backup and restore at The XLab FAQs.
Following is more information on RAIDs:
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?
OS X has software for creating RAIDs by using Disk Utility. Open Disk Utility and select DU Help from the Help menu. Search for "raid" without quotes. You will find information on how to set up mirrored and striped RAIDs using Disk Utility.