Hard drive setup question....

Hi-
I'm looking for a little advice.... I will soon be the proud owner of a new Mac Pro, and I’m trying to figure out the best way to setup all of the extraneous hard drives I have accumulated over the last year or so….
I have a 160GB drive pulled from my broken iMac G5 (can I even put that inside the Mac Pro?)
A 250GB drive coming installed in the new Mac Pro
A 350GB drive given to me by a friend (pulled from his Mac Pro)
A 750GB drive also coming installed in the new Mac Pro
And a 500GB external drive.
My thought was to setup a striped RAID set (RAID 0) with the 250GB and 350GB drives, knowing I would loose 100GB, but end up with a fast 500GB drive… I would use this drive for my home folders, apps, etc… My basic work drive.
I would use the 750GB drive for my music, video files and photos.
I would use the 500GB external drive as a Time Machine Backup
And the 160GB drive as a clean system, to boot up into if needed…..
Is this the best setup? Am I missing something? Should I be doing something else with the drives? Is there any way NOT to loose that 100GB on the raid drives?
Any advice would be appreciated!

$83 buys a fast 110MB/sec WD Caviar 640GB.
http://www.barefeats.com/harper14.html
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Western%20Digital/WD6400AAKS/
I would not even think of putting two unlike drives, and they won't be any better than the above.
$79 buys a SATA drive case with FW800/400 interface for your emergency drives. Great for the small emergency boot drive.
Save and skip on buying 750GB from Apple.
But do what you must - after buying Mac Pro, you may not have the funds, and you do want to have more than stock 2GB RAM.
Apple OEM drives, other than the 750GB are consumer grade 8MB/sec and I would not use it for boot drive, keep it as backup in that external case.

Similar Messages

Mac Pro Hard Drive Setup Question

Mr. FedEx brought me my Mac Pro today and I'm getting ready to set it up. I'm migrating from a PowerBook G4 17 inch and got the Mac Pro 3.0 GHz, 8 GB RAM, and four 500 GB hard drives. I figure I should do a freash install of Aperture instead of using the Migration Wizard. The question for the night is, how should I handle the four hard drives? Out of the box I see four seperate hard drives labled Macintosh HD. For Aperture, should I use software raid across all four drives or only three leaving the OS drive by itselft for applications?
Mac Pro Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Sure you can... I got a Raid 0 on two 300Gb drives on my boot drive... They host the OS and my apps.
The trick is that its got to be a fresh install. You boot with your hardware giag disk and in the menu you have the disk utility. Create the RAID setup and then quit. You can now boot the disk with the OS install and it will recognize it as such.
Now - a few things to consider. Next version of OS X has Time Machine that that expects a volume (a disk, the whole disk) for it to work. So it would be cool if you find out about it and sort of prepare for it.
Having said that I would Raid0 two pairs and Raid1 the two. This is called Raid 1+0 or Raid 10. Its a good compromise but if drive 1 AND 3 fail then there is no backup. I would also get an external firewire disk (say 300Gb or 500Gb) and use it as a vault. But that is because I can't think of running the machine with a full backup of what I got, still not a perfect solution.
The way I got it is using Raid 0 on my OS and Apps (600Gb) with an external Firewire disk for backup. (no Raid 0 - so there is no statistical odds to beat)
Apeture has two drives. Two Firewire 800 (1Tb) drives, one the library and the other is the vault. The vault also stores the deleted images, so you will have to clean every now and then or it will grow faster than your library.
http://www.terraoptica.com

External Hard Drive Setup

Hello! I am an amateur filmmaker aged 17, and for the past couple years I have been using my school's excellent computers (iMac 2010 27"), software (FCP 7), and external hard drive setup (500GB LaCie Rugged Firewire 800).
I'm gonna be a senior this year and am looking to create my own setup. I got myself a 15" MacBook Pro Retina with 16gb memory, 2.3GHz quad core processor, 500GB internal solid state storage, and am using Premiere Pro as my software. The only real thing I'm missing (besides audio setup, which isn't as important to me right now) is external drive for faster editing. I want a lot of storage but at the same time high speeds all for the lowest price. I also want to use my external drive for other stuff like family photos and music.
MY idea was to get a 500GB 7200rpm hard drive (not sure which one) to store all the footage I want on hand and then get a 4TB desktop hard drive (cheaper) for all the rest of my stuff and to store footage I no longer need quick access to.
My questions are:
What hard drives should I get?
Is this a good solution?
Is 4TB overboard?
Should I be spending this much as a 17 year-old?
Should I just stick with internal storage for now and not pay for external drive?
btw, one of the 500gb drives I was looking at was by Touro. Trustworthy?
Amazon.com: HGST Touro Mobile Pro 500GB USB 3.0 7200 RPM Portable External Hard Drive (0S03105) [Amazon Frustration-Free…

"Yeah it was in the wrong area but hey who's keeping score. "
Actually, I am - LOL!

Hard drive setup for CS5.5

Okay, finished a new build:
Intel Core i7 2600K processor
Asus P8Z68-V motherboard
Corsair 16 GB memory
Zotac GTX560 video card
OCZtech 60 GB SSD boot drive
2x Hitachi 1.5 TB 7200 hard drives
LG blu-ray burner
So the question is about the hard drive setup. Boot drive is pretty basic, with Windows 7 pro, CS5.5, firefox, and MS Office about the only things installed. So, two questions:
1. How do I change the boot drive so that things like "My Documents" is put on the D: or E: drive rather than the C boot drive? Is it a Windows thing or do changes need to be made within Office or Firefox?
2. How do I set up the two extra hard drives for Premier? The IT guy combined the two drives into one partition, which kindof defeats the point of having two drives, right? So we need to split those back out so there's a D & E drive and then I designate within Premier that the media cache and previews goes on one, and the storage & media & projects goes on the other? Do I need to do that within all the separate programs -- After Effects, Illustrator, Photoshop, Premier, etc. -- or can it be done all at once?
Thanks for any help!

1. Windows.
2. Those disks are in raid0 and appear as a single disk, so all you need is to have the IT guy add another two disks in a similar raid0 and to add an external disk for your backups.
See Adobe Forums: Generic Guideline for Disk Setup

I have a windows 7 desktop with an external hard drive setup on my home network, will i be able to access this on my home network to save and retrieve files from my mac air?

i have a windows 7 desktop with an external hard drive setup on my home network, will i be able to access this on my home network to save and retrieve files from my mac air?

Troubleshooting Home Sharing - http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2972

Hard Drive Setup for Creative Professional

Hi. I own a Mac Pro 3Ghz tower, and I only have one 250Gb hard drive along with an Iomega external 250Gb hard drive. I really need to upgrade my hard drives and create proper backups. I'm just not sure about the best options for backing up all my data and what the best options are for setting up my harddrives. Can anyone offer advice to a graphic designer that needs to upgrade his hard drive setup? I'm not sure what Raid is, so I would need to better understand what that does as well. I guess I need a road plan for the best way to go about all this upgrading.
Thanks.

Hi There,
I know you posted this more than a month ago, but i thought i'd see what you found and...what you can offer me in the way of answers. I appreciate any help you can give me!! Thanks in advance. I might have a couple options for you too.
I have the same set up pretty much. 1 250gb internal, 1 250 gb external, plus a 175gb external that i keep off site. Files are everywhere, yes i have copies, but it's an organizational disaster and not fail safe. If i lost a clients job, i'd loose more than the cost of just setting up a good backup system.
I found a few things out.
You can set up a software raid on your macpro using disk utility(although I don't know how to do it yet). (for raid info, look up raid on wikipedia, it's just a variety of ways to create more than one copy of data on any # of drives. 2 drives is a mirror image, 3 can be striped(any one drive can fail), and more...there are speed advantages with these too. )
Anyway i have 3 bays open for drives in my 2.66ghz quad. So setting up a software raid is option 1 - but from reading forums it seems like this isn't easy and requires maintainance? If you add a drive or remove one it erases all drives(?).
There is a system my friend turned me on to called Drobo.
It seems like the easiest solution and one that is lasting, check out the website at drobo.com it's external, has 4 bays and you can add and remove drives on a whim and upgrade up to 4tb. seems the easy solution, but costs 500 and then you need to purchase drives. but you can use any drives and it seems maintanance free.
Any recommendations - is software raid easier than I imagine?
Anyone have any offsite storage ideas? (.mac would be ideal, but it costs so much for storage and it's slow).
Looking forward to hearing your solution, and any advice for me.
Thanks,
Josh

IMac Hard Drive Setup Recommendations/ Thunderbolt

Hi,
i am planning to get a new top spec 27" iMac with 256GB internal SSD and will use it mainly with Premiere CC and After Effects CC to edit Red Epic Footage. Mostly 3 to 10 minute web videos. I am now thinking about the best Hard Drive Setup and could use some help.
My actual plan would be:
OS/Programms: Internal 256GB SSD
Project Files:       external 2TB USB 3 Hard Drive
Source Footage: CalDigit T3 Raid 6TB (Raid 0)
Media Chache:    256GB SSD with the Thunderbolt Go Flex Station
Outputs:            external 2TB USB 3 Hard Drive
Should this work well?
- How well works daisy chaining with thunderbolt: Is it ok to daisy chain a monitor to an thunderbolt connected hard drive or will this slow things down? How about daisy chaining a second hard drive? Should both hard drives then have "read" or "write" tasks or could i daisy chain an drive for my Renderings (write) to one with my Source Footage (read)?
- If i use a 5-bay Thunderbolt Raid enclosure, is it possible to use 3 drives in a Raid 0 for my source footage and drives 4 & 5 in Raid 1 for my Outputs (Renderings) or Projects? Or would this be a bad idea?
- How important is the size/speed of my Media Chache/Previews drive? Would an 256 GB SSD in an thunderbolt enclosure be a good choice?
- What read speeds should my storage for the source footage have so it`s not the bottleneck? Is there a big benefit from a 3-drive Thunderbolt Raid 0 vs. a 3-drive USB3 Raid 0 (both Software Raids)?
- What write speeds should i have for my Output storage?
Thanks a lot for the help!

[Moved to Hardware forum.]

External hard drive setup for time machine reading as a virtual cd

Why is my MacBook Pro reading my external hard drive setup for time machine reading as a virtual cd?
Thanks

Hi Christian,
Is this something that has happened from the start? If so, I would reformat the disk and setup TM from scratch again.
Prepare the external HD by connecting to the Mac, open Disk Utility, select the manufacturer’s name of the external HD, select Partition and choose GUID Partition Table, format to Apple OS Extended (Journaled); quit Disk Utility.
Open System Preferences.
Click on Time Machine.
Click on “Select Disk.”
Click just to the left of "On" to turn TM on if it's not already on.
Click on the disk or partition you want to use.
Click on “Use for backup.”
Leave external HD connected, and TM will automatically do its thing.

Hard Drive Setup - which drives to use for what

So I have decided on buying a segate 7200.14 hard drive (Tell me if this is a bad one, I just saw a bunch of reviews and benchmarks and it is supposed to be one of the fastest), but I'm not sure weather to use it as a scratch disk, a media disk, or an OS disk. Currently I only have one slow, old 500gb drive, which I was going to use to store old media and exports (I don't need to acces projects that I worked on a year ago). I have an external backup drive as well. I was thinking of getting the 7200.14 drive, since it is so fast and cheap and using it for my main drive, but now I'm wondering, would I be better off using it as the scratch drive? I can always wait for my OS and programs and such to load slower, but I'd like stuff inside of the program to be quick. I also don't care much about exports since I'm in no rush to get the work out as quick as I can, and I normally just leave it rendering overnight.
TL;DR
1.) slow, old 500gb drive
2.) new, fast 7200.14 drive
3.) I can possibly buy another drive if it's absolutely necessary, but I have gathered that the third drive is for OS, which I don't need to load quickly at all.
Which one of these things is most bottlenecked by the hard drive? What should I do with my hard drive setup?
EDIT:
Also, is the 7200.14 a good drive? Tell me a better one if you think of one. I was thinking of getting the 1tb version but I might get the 3tb version for storage, since its a much better $/gb.

Alright, I've gathered that the media cache and the medi files are not suited to be on an SSD (media because of large file sizes and media cache because of longevity, since it has to read and write so many times). But which one would I benefit more from being faster? Or could I just leave them both slow, and get two cheaper slower hard drives instead of the one fast 7200.14?

Best Hard Drive Setup for Premiere Pro CS5.5

I'm running Premiere Pro cs5.5 on a Dell XPS 8300 (I know, I know!) with an i72600 chip and a 560TI card. The system came with two 500 GB Sata hard drives in a Raid0 configuration. I've seen a lot about proper hard drive setup but I'm a newbie (hence the Dell - I purchased before I read the forums). Should I add a third (or more) drive? How can I configure them taking into account what's already onboard? thanks very much!

If it were me, I'd add at least two more hard drives. A smallish one around 250 to 320 GB for the System drive. I'd reinstall Windows onto that.
Then I'd break out the RAID into separate drives, using one for Project and Scratch files and one for Exports.
The second new drive would be a really big one - 1TB or more. This I'd use exclusively for Media.*
* If I had a tapeless camera, such as AVCHD, then I'd definitely build in some kind of data safety, like at least a second 1TB drive for a RAID 1. Or if I had more money, add a third 1TB and a RAID controller card to make it a RAID 3.

Hello, can someone help me: my eMac G4 700 MHz. I can not boot it. If he starts appears on the screen, only a small "folder with a question mark." The Mac was not used 1 year. Question 1: Problem = hard drive? Question 2: Problem = PRAM battery? the What

Hello, can someone help me: my eMac G4 700 MHz. I can not boot it. If he starts appears on the screen, only a small "folder with a question mark." The Mac was not used 1 year.
Question 1: Problem = hard drive?
Question 2: Problem = PRAM battery?
the
What can I do to boot?

Restart with the Option key held down.
If the internal drive shows up, it's the PRAM battery.
If it doesn't, insert a compatible Mac OS 9 or X install disk, click the button with the circular arrow, and either repair the internal drive or install a new OS on it. If it doesn't show up in Disk First Aid(9) or the Disk Utility(X), it's either not plugged in or needs to be replaced.
(97530)

Question: Hard Drive Setup for Photoshop

Hi There,
I am looking to purchase a new Dell system for use with Adobe Creative suites, and will mostly be using Photoshop. The system will be running CS4 with Vista 64bit, and we will use 8GB or RAM (or more if anyone suggest). My main question is in regards to hard drive configuration. My partition setup will be as follows:
C: windows OS, windows page file, adobe program files
D: photoshop scratch disk
E: data files
In terms of performance, how would you suggest I purchase/configure drives between the options below:
1) Buy 3 sas 15k drives and make a single RAID 0 disk. Partition the single disk with the 3 partitions listed above
2) Buy 3 sas 15 k drives, and put one partition on each drive (non-RAID 0)
Let me know if you have any recommendations on this setup or any other recommendations would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Thanks Freeagent!

External USB Hard Drive Setup - My Experience

Short Summary: I reformatted my 300Gb external hard drive to Mac Extended format (not journaled) with 3 separate partitions: Photos, Music, and Backup Files. Plugged the HD into the AirPort base station and then ran the AirPort Disk Utility (HD accessed via base station password) and place the AP Disk Utility icon on the task bar. I clicked on the icon, entered my password, and the three partitions appeared on my desktop. I am now able to read/write to the HD with both Mac computers and my Windows computer (loaded with the windows version of AP Utility software) via my wireless network.
My Hardware: Cable Modem, AirPort (AP) Extreme 802.11n, SeaGate 300GB USB/Fire Wire External HD, iMac w/ core duo, PowerBook Pro w/ core duo, AP Express setup as a print server, and my Windows XP computer for gaming.
Initial Setup: I shut down all computers and replaced my old AP extreme with the new one. I plugged in the SeaGate HD to the AP base station, turned on the AP then turned on the HD. Turned on my PowerBook (PB) Pro, loaded the new AP software and was connected to the internet with no problem. Similar to other posting on this topic, my external HD was not visible despite running AP Disk Utility.
Follow on troubleshooting: The HD was formatted in Mac Extended (Journaled) and had 9 GB of data that was stored via USB wire directly from my PB Pro. I transfered the data to my PB Pro via USB and then, using the standard OS10 Disk Utility application, reformatted the HD in Mac Extended (Journaled) with 3 partitions. I reconnected the HD to the AP base station and ran AP disk utility again. Lo and behold, the 3 partitions showed up on the desktop of my PB Pro. I loaded the AP software onto my iMac and Windows Computer and they both recognized the HD. I successfully op tested file transfer via the wireless network (about 2.5 MB/sec data transfer rate).
The Kicker: I then ejected the HD from my computers, disconnected it from the AP base station, and then hooked it directly to my PB Pro to transfer 11 GB of music files. As expected the data transfer rate was much higher. I reconnected the HD to the AP base station but the HD got hung up and was no longer accessible via the wireless network. I connected another external HD (ACOM 160 GB, NTFS file format) and while it was accessible, not all files were visible. I disconnected the ACOM HD from the AP base station, hooked it directly to my PB Pro, transferred 1 GB of music files and reconnected it to the AP base station. It reappeared on my PB Pro after running the AP Disk Utility, however, the files I just transferred were not visible. Noticing a pattern, I have determined that for my hardware lineup, any files that are directly transferred to the HDs either cause the HD to hang up or are not visible. I can only speculate on why this occurs; maybe there is a causal link to the format standard of the disk (NTFS, Mac Extended (journaled) or the processing of pre-existing data on the HD.
The Final Fix: I connected the Seagate HD to my PB Pro with a USB cable and then cleared it of all data by erasing all partitions and contents using the normal Disk Utility application. I then re-formatted and re-partitioned to 3 partitions with the Mac Extended format (not journaled). I reconnected the HD to the AP base Station, went through the AP disk utility again and all 3 partitions were made available to both of my Mac computers and my Windows computer. Data transfer is now strictly limited to wireless transfers.
Conclusion: Though the wireless transfer takes longer, all data is present, visible and accessible by all three computers. Once the data is present, applications such as iPhoto and iTunes works just fine with minimal drop off in performance. While my experience with my Apple computers has been somewhat more satisfying than adding new hardware to my windows platform, this particular case demonstrates that data standards and PnP are still elusive goals in the computer industry.
Cheers and hope this helps someone,
HCW3
iMac and PowerBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Tom,
Welcome to the world of cross polination between OS X and Windows, glad to know I am not alone.
First off, you should load the APE software on all computers using your wireless network. This will enable you to access the USB HD from all computers.
Secondly, I am not certain if it is necessary to reformat your HD. I had the good fortune of having only a few files on my SeaGate 300GB so it was somewhat painless for me to reformat. This is what I do know from years of building windows computers and setting up my current network: starting with clean disks is always the best way to build a new system. With that said, try this: connect your second maxtor (the one with the itunes library) to the APE USB port and access it via your MacBook Pro. Go into Finder, select that drive and type .mp3 into the spotlight box. Does it find your music files on that drive? When your double click on a song it should play. If you go back into finder and select that USB drive again, do you see a folder for that artist? If you answer yes to the previous questions you are experiencing the same thing I did. Whenever I wrote files to the USB drive via the USB cable, they were not visible when I accessed the drive wirelessly. I have not figured out why this is so and I am sorry that this doesn't really help you out.
As far as the windows computer not seeing the USB drive via the ethernet connection, that is a tough one to troubleshoot since the APE would presumably allow hardwire connectivity. It seems to me that the APE should be acting similarly to a USB hub. It may have something to do with the modulation of the data stream between the USB line and the ethernet line, though this is probably a bad guess.
My best advice would be to transfer your itunes and video to DVD-ROM disks and then reformat the USB drive to Mac Extended and assign it a new volume name. Plug it in to the APE and verify you can access it via all your computers. If so, transfer the music back to the USB disk wirelessly. This will take a while so do it before you go to bed. I recognize that this is a very neanderthal work around, however, it will preserve your files and allow you to start from a clean slate. It will also take a while for itunes to repopulate the library list from the new location of the files, so start this before you leave the house for work.
Howard Warner
iMac and PowerBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Time Machine, External Hard Drives, Drobos, questions....

I'm not sure if I'm posting this in the right place, but feel free to point me somewhere else if not. I'm a professional photographer transitioning into some video work and am currently working out a media drive / backup drive solution to suit the needs of a one man band. Currently I have a couple of 2TB MyBooks running, and backup from one to the other each night, which isn't the most elegant solution but has worked so far. I've just ordered a Drobo and hard disks to give me a little more peace of mind, but because the Drobo isn't known for being the fastest solution in the world (at least the basic model isn't), I'm also purchasing a G-Tech Raid drive to use as my active media drive.
I'm hoping the following is possible and hoping someone can answer a couple of questions I have about using the following setup. I plan to use Time Machine as a backup solution, which saves me continually having to copy and check files are all in the right place each night as I do at the moment when manually backing up. I believe it's possible to have the G-Raid drive, which is where all media will be placed when importing, as part of a Time Machine backup that will put the contents of my iMac (which is not much, just core software) and the G-Raid onto the Drobo, and keep things updated when files are changed, updated or deleted.
The first thing I wanted to check is that I'm right in the assumption that the above scenario is not a problem? I'm guessing not as it seems lots of people use variances on this method. But what I'm wondering is, what happens when I fill the 1 or 2 TB raid drive (G-tech), and want to change it out for another one, and the Drobo, which has more and expandable storage, is not full? If I remove the G-Tech drive and replace it with a new one, will Time Machine just carry on as normal, leaving all the original data that was on the older drive untouched on the Drobo and still accessible in the future?
Is it better to partition the Drobo and create a section that is the same size as the current media drive I'm using (500gb, 1tb, etc...) and point the Time Machine to use that section, and then switch to a new partition when putting in a new media drive, or is that unnecessary and overcomplicating things?
I'm assuming that a lot of people tend to have 1 external hard drive working as their media drive, and another running time machine and backing up whatever's on the media drive, and that these drives are the same size, and a swapped out for new ones simultaneously when full. But if you are using a much larger backup drive, like a Drobo, then what do you do in the above situations?
Basically, I want a simple solution that allows me to have a fast (firewire 800 max as I'm using an iMac atm), media drive attached and which is backed up to a drive with redundancy, like a Drobo, and where I can change out that media drive without a problem and changes made on it are mirrored on the backup drive (but where data doesn't get deleted on the backup drive if I need to change out the media drive). My data needs are met with the above mentioned drives and I don't yet need to start investing in more advanced systems to deal with what I'm doing, I just need a solution that is simple, doesn't require excessive time spent tweaking and monitoring things, and where my data is safe if a drive fails.
Finally, I'm guessing if the above scenario is possible then I'll be connecting the G-Tech to the Firewire 800 port and the Drobo to the USB, but I thought I'd ask whilst I'm here whether anybody knows if you can daisy chain the Drobo to the G-Tech via Firewire and still have it operating as a separate backup drive using Time Machine; if this method is possible would people reccomend it over using the iMac's USB port?
Many thanks in advance for any help or suggestions people can offer, and sorry that was such a huge ramble.

I'm not sure if I'm posting this in the right place, but feel free to point me somewhere else if not. I'm a professional photographer transitioning into some video work and am currently working out a media drive / backup drive solution to suit the needs of a one man band. Currently I have a couple of 2TB MyBooks running, and backup from one to the other each night, which isn't the most elegant solution but has worked so far. I've just ordered a Drobo and hard disks to give me a little more peace of mind, but because the Drobo isn't known for being the fastest solution in the world (at least the basic model isn't), I'm also purchasing a G-Tech Raid drive to use as my active media drive.
I'm hoping the following is possible and hoping someone can answer a couple of questions I have about using the following setup. I plan to use Time Machine as a backup solution, which saves me continually having to copy and check files are all in the right place each night as I do at the moment when manually backing up. I believe it's possible to have the G-Raid drive, which is where all media will be placed when importing, as part of a Time Machine backup that will put the contents of my iMac (which is not much, just core software) and the G-Raid onto the Drobo, and keep things updated when files are changed, updated or deleted.
The first thing I wanted to check is that I'm right in the assumption that the above scenario is not a problem? I'm guessing not as it seems lots of people use variances on this method. But what I'm wondering is, what happens when I fill the 1 or 2 TB raid drive (G-tech), and want to change it out for another one, and the Drobo, which has more and expandable storage, is not full? If I remove the G-Tech drive and replace it with a new one, will Time Machine just carry on as normal, leaving all the original data that was on the older drive untouched on the Drobo and still accessible in the future?
Is it better to partition the Drobo and create a section that is the same size as the current media drive I'm using (500gb, 1tb, etc...) and point the Time Machine to use that section, and then switch to a new partition when putting in a new media drive, or is that unnecessary and overcomplicating things?
I'm assuming that a lot of people tend to have 1 external hard drive working as their media drive, and another running time machine and backing up whatever's on the media drive, and that these drives are the same size, and a swapped out for new ones simultaneously when full. But if you are using a much larger backup drive, like a Drobo, then what do you do in the above situations?
Basically, I want a simple solution that allows me to have a fast (firewire 800 max as I'm using an iMac atm), media drive attached and which is backed up to a drive with redundancy, like a Drobo, and where I can change out that media drive without a problem and changes made on it are mirrored on the backup drive (but where data doesn't get deleted on the backup drive if I need to change out the media drive). My data needs are met with the above mentioned drives and I don't yet need to start investing in more advanced systems to deal with what I'm doing, I just need a solution that is simple, doesn't require excessive time spent tweaking and monitoring things, and where my data is safe if a drive fails.
Finally, I'm guessing if the above scenario is possible then I'll be connecting the G-Tech to the Firewire 800 port and the Drobo to the USB, but I thought I'd ask whilst I'm here whether anybody knows if you can daisy chain the Drobo to the G-Tech via Firewire and still have it operating as a separate backup drive using Time Machine; if this method is possible would people reccomend it over using the iMac's USB port?
Many thanks in advance for any help or suggestions people can offer, and sorry that was such a huge ramble.

Dual Hard Drive Setup and Time Machine Backup

Hello All, I am about to start a major upgrade to my iMac and I just need a tiny bit of help.
I will be installing a secondary hard drive, an SSD into the empty space on my 2011 iMac, and upgrading the HDD to a 3tb. I know this is a big job but I did all my homework and I am ready to go. Here is my plan and my question:
1. Do the install. Add the 3tb hard drive in place of the 1tb original and install the ssd.
2. install mountain lion from disc onto the ssd
3. start up my new awesomly fast computer, and move the home folder to the 3tb drive so that only the applications and osx are on the ssd
4. use time machine to put all my data back onto my computer.
#4 is where my question is. If I use time machine to restore my data AFTER I have moved my home folder to the 2nd drive, will Time Machine function properly? Will it know that some of the data about the system will need to go on the SSD and some will need to go on the large capacity drive?
This is a very important question, because if it turns out that Time Machine will be confused by this, I will need to just back up my individual files and drop them piecemeal back into my new setup. This would be a huge pain and would make me rebuild all of my system preferences etc.
Has anyone done this before? Any insight would be very much appreciated!

Make life simple. Leave your HDD as it is and clone it to the 3 TB drive. Install the 3 TB drive in your computer and verify it starts up the computer. Next, install Mountain Lion onto your SSD. Put the SSD into the computer. Use Startup Disk preference pane to set the SSD as the permanent boot volume. Boot the computer from the SSD. Setup the SSD admin account with the exact same username and password as on the HDD. Open Users & Groups preference pane, click on the lock icon to authenticate. CTRL- or RIGHT-click on the SSD's entry in the users list and select Advanced Options from the context menu. On the right side of the Home dir: field is a Choose button. Click on the button, locate the /Users/username/ folder on the HDD, select it and click on the Open button. Close the Advanced Options window and immediately restart the computer.
You will now boot from the SSD using your Home folder located on the HDD.
Clone Lion/Mountain Lion using Restore Option of Disk Utility
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
     1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu then press the Continue
         button.
     2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
     3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
     4. Check the box labeled Erase destination.
     5. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it
         to the Destination entry field.
     6. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to
         the Source entry field.
     7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the new 3TB drive. Source means the old startup drive.

Hard drive setup question....

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