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.]

Similar Messages

Can i use a external thunderbolt harddrive to copy my imac hard drive.

how fast would a thunderbolt external hard drive be, if i were to copy my Imac hard drive as a backup or image. At the moment its taking 4 hours to copy 95gig using my USB external hard drive......Seems like forever!!!!!

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1948?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
Visit that link. It seems you should be able to but you would have to format the drive and install the operating system to it.
On the iMac, start it up and immeditely hold down Command + R. From there you can open disk utility and format it.

Can anyone recommend software to scan iMac hard drive for errors

Hello Apple Community
Can anyone recommend software to scan iMac hard drive for errors/defects/corruption?
I've been having problems with hard drive for months and it finally froze on me so I reformatted and restored from Time Machine.
Everything is fine now but I just have a feeling I will see the same problems occur because I simply restored to the exact moment from where I was having problems (i.e. Finder crashing/permissions issues/Volumes unmounting/Trash not working/Random error messages/Computer crashing when opening or saving PNG).
I read that sometime Disk Utility doesn't always pick up on a defect or corrupt hard drive. The whole time I was having problems Disk Utility said HD was ok.
Is there software that can do a better job of scanning hard drive for errors and let me know if I need to get HD replaced?
Thanks
Brad

I agree with both. Most important though is you backup your data frequently*:
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
That way if a problem should arise, and it is a result of the hard drive actually dying, you won't accidently kill the hard drive in the process of trying to detect errors.

I upgraded my imac hard drive to a 2tb drive. how do i use time machine to get my computer back to normal?

i upgraded my imac hard drive to a 2tb drive. how do i use time machine to get my computer back to normal?

Thank you. I followed the faq#14 (using setup wizard from the osx install disk). Everything went just as planned until I woke up this morning and noticed there was no progress on the "transferring documents" meter. It stopped about 1/4 of the way. I can hear the computer working and the bar is somewhat animated like it is advancing but it's not.
Should I cancel and restart or should I wait it out? It already been about 13 hours since I started the process. Do you think it is my time machine or my iMac? Maybe the time machine file is corrupt or something.
Anyway, any help is appreciated. Thanks.

I need to replace my late 2006 20" imac hard drive

here's what i have
VIN,IMAC (20-INCH LATE 2006)
running leopard 10.5.8
Hardware Overview:
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier:    iMac5,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.16 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 3 GB
Bus Speed:    667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: IM51.0090.B09
SMC Version (system): 1.9f4
Serial Number (system): W8******VUV
WDC WD2500JS-40TGB0:
Capacity: 232.89 GB
Model:    WDC WD2500JS-40TGB0
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Failing
Volumes: Macintosh HD:
Capacity: 232.57 GB
Available: 106.04 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name:    disk0s2
disk utility shows this:
my mac is still running like a champ but as the pictures above show it's time
i've found a lot of people with the same question i have on this site with answers but most links that people suggest are broken or 2 of the hard drives they've recommended are discontiued
i've got a frys electronics and best buy near by or internet if that's the best way to go about it
what exactly do i need to look for when i'm at a store or online?
what size hard drive, any? 250GB, 500GB, 750GB, 1TB
3.5" SATA
7200RPM
does cache matter?
anything else?
people's responses to: Need to replace my late 2006 imac hard drive - what should i be looking for to replace it?
1. You can use any 3.5" Sata drive, WD or Seagate would be good choices.
2. Do not use "green" drives like the WD Blue series. WD Black are fine as are Seagates.
3. The 2T green will work fine in the Intel iMac's. I always suggest using the quieter and cooler running Blue's or Green's in the iMac's.
4. Personally I have upgraded the Hard Drive in several Early Core Duo's using both 320GB and 500GB WD Cavair Blue's.
5. WD Caviar Blue or WD Caviar Green, they run cooler and quieter than the WD Black or Seagate's.
6. I'm very happy with the WD Caviar Blue that replaced my factory installed 160GB Seagate HD a few months ago.
i've found some good DIY tutorials for install
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShY8zuT-wPg&feature=player_embedded
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac+Intel+20-Inch+EMC+2105+and+2118+Hard+Drive+Repl acement/1092/1
any help will be appreciated,
sean k
<Edited by Host>

thanks for the quick reply kappy,
i plan to purchase a new imac when they are actually shipped, in stores, and i know all my handicap assisted devises will work on it
you say "Do not buy a drive designed for SATA 3 6 Gb/s interfaces as some may not work on the controller in your iMac"
at frys it breaks the groups like this:
Interface (32)
SATA/300 (17)
SATA/600 (9)
PATA/100 (6)
could you take a look at this link to frys and recommend a hard drive
http://www.frys.com/search?cat=-69564&pType=pDisplay&fq=100413%203.5-100415%2072 00
or bestbuy internal hard drives
like you said it's got a limited life and just need something to get by till the new imacs arrive

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

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!

Imac hard drive replacement

Incredibly my rarely used 2011 Imac Hard Drive is toast. I saw they have a replacement program but even though it is way too soon for a hard drive OF QUALITY to be going out so soon as mine - mine is not included in the replacement program.
Which I have a problem with - how odd it is that they had enough trouble with these computers/hard drives to do a replacement program but mine which did the same thing, expired way too soon isn't covered. I've not had use of the computer for 4 months while I tried to fix the problem so it lasted a little over a year.
Anyway I need to know what to do to try to replace it myself as i haven't the funds to take it to Apple for repair. Plus, Apple Computers and me are history I will never buy another after spending over $1200 for a computer that's nothing more than a very large paperweight right now.
How do I know what size and all that?
I may not be able to afford even that so more than likely this is going to be a very nice looking worthless computer going to the landfill.

I Am leaning more toward Kappy's comments, based on your attitude and comments, but I will ask some questions and add some useful comments as I am in a somewhat charitable mood.
Do you still have AppleCare on this iMac?
From your rather blunt comments I assume no, but have to ask anyhow.
This is why I recommend purchasing and registering for 3- year extended AppleCare.
Because of the nature of the newer iMac designs, hardware failure seems more likely or commonplace occurrence. I believe it's more of a excessive heat related issue than anything else despite what Apple has qualified as "normal" operating temps for these iMac models.
Check out the iFixit home site and search for iMac disassembly or tear/take down. Or search for iMac hard drive replacement on the site.
Another option is for you to purchase an external FireWire 400/800 drive as your new boot drive.
Running your iMac from a FW800 drive will be about as fast as running it from the iMac's Internal drive.
If you can afford it get as large a drive as you can afford.
And just for your info, while hard drives can last for years without issue they will go bad, eventually.
Some drives crash and burn faster than others. Especiallly true of the notebook style drives that Apple installs into the newer design iMac. With hard drives, the question is not if they will fail, but when will they fail.
If you had all of your data backed up to an extra, external drive or optical discs to begin with, you wouldn't be so upset about your internal drive dying as your data still would've been intact on another drive or discs in the first place.
I Always advocate for having some sort of backup strategy for your important data in the event of hardware or hard drive storage failure.

Is it possible to connect an external USB 2.0 hard drive to a Thunderbolt Display?

Hello,
Is it possible to connect an external USB 2.0 hard drive to a Thunderbolt Display and back up a MacBook Air to the external hard drive using Time Machine?
I intend to connect my MacBook Air to the Thunderbolt Display using a Thunderbolt cable.
I would also like to connect my printer via USB 2.0 to the Thunderbolt Display. Will this also work?
Effectively using the Thunderbolt Display as a USB hub or docking station.
Regards,
Ben

Ok, thanks.
My 1 cable to ThunderBolt Display objective
MacBook Air -> (via 1 x Thunderbolt cable) -> Thunderbolt Display -> (via 1 x USB cable) -> USB 2.0 external hard drive
I would like to know if this configuration is possible and Time Machine will run correctly.
Your 2 cable suggestion (I think)
MacBook Air -> (via 1 x Thunderbolt cable + 1 x USB cable) -> Thunderbolt Display + USB 2.0 external hard drive
This configuration requires 2 cables to disconnect/reconnect from my MacBook Air.

Where can I buy a larger hard drive for my late 2008, 15" macbook pro? From reviewing questions and answers on the support community it would appear that having Apple remove the old and install the new hard drive is recommended. But how/where?

Where can I buy a larger hard drive for my late 2008, 15" macbook pro? From reviewing questions and answers on the support community it would appear that having Apple remove the old and install the new hard drive is recommended. But how/where?

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
You can install the new hard disk yourself if you want to. You just need a 2'5" SATA II hard drive, which is compatible with your MacBook Pro. You can buy one at OWC > http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/2.5-Notebook/ You can filter hard drives by computer, so press a "Click to view all...", choose your computer in the sidebar and it will give you the compatible hard drives.
There are different brands for the MacBook Pro. The most recommended are HGST and Seagate, which have good reputation. A 7200 rpm hard drive will give you extra performance

I am running my first backup on Time Machine using a Seagate external hard drive with a thunderbolt adapter and cable. I have a MacBook Pro 2011. It is backing up 11GB, and is telling me it will take approx two days. Is this normal?

I am running my first backup on Time Machine using a Seagate external hard drive with a thunderbolt adapter and cable. I have a MacBook Pro 2011. It is backing up 11GB, and is telling me it will take approx two days. Is this normal?

Download the supplemental fix to 10.7.5
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1599

Ello, I changed my Imac hard drive which no longer worked. I installed a hard drive Western Digital 500 GB 7200 rpm SATA3 WD5002AALX 32M Black. Sometimes I see the hard disk in the utility on the Starter CD, but access seems very slow. By cons when I want

Hello, I changed my Imac hard drive which no longer worked. I installed a hard drive
Western Digital 500 GB 7200 rpm SATA3 WD5002AALX 32M Black. Sometimes I see the hard disk in the utility on the Starter CD, but access seems very slow. By cons when I want
install OS X 10.4.2 on the hard drive, I do not see the disk. What is the problem?

Thanks for the help
I started on the installation CD OS X 10.4.2, I used Disk Utility
to partition the disk according to the document that you have proposed. unfortunately
I have not succeeded. When I partition the disk, even if I called it Macintosh HD, it
does not keep the name and it shows disk0s3 instead. I did an erase on disk.
When I mount the disk it tells me that I must repair. When I tried to repair, I got
the following message:
Volume check failed
The underflying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error.
I also had a message:
Invalid b-tree node size.
Note: The disc is new, but it has already been formatted on a computer Imac 27 inch 2011 OS X Lion.
I used a USB 2.0 to SATA cable to adjust the formatting.
What to do to fix it?

Slow iMac and Time machine won't recognize iMac hard drive

I have an older iMac (2.16GHz Intel) that is upgraded to OSX10.6.7. Recently it has been running very slow (although it did not seem to correlate with any particular install that I know of). I have looked at the Activity Monitor and cannot find anything that is consuming vast amounts of memory (although I can't say that I really know what I'm looking for exactly, just no high numbers). I did a Safe Boot and it is still really slow there (EXAMPLE of slow is taking several minutes to open a program or taking 27 hours to download my pictures (which only took 13 minutes on my MacBook)). I know my iMac could use more memory (1G), but the slow problem is there even if only running one program. I can't find a particular pattern to it, it just hangs up and then comes back most of the time. It did however start shutting itself down recently. I finally got into disk utility (I've been trying to run disk utility and it usually goes into an eternal spin that I can't even force quit - have to hard boot). So from disk utility I ran verify disk in first aid - it says "the volume Macintosh HD appears to be ok." I"m not sure what else I'm supposed to do in here either. So my first question is Does anyone have any other suggestions for the slowness? Second, in the meantime I'm desperately trying to back up my data on the time machine that I stupidly have never set up as a back up. I can manually put files one at a time over there, but if I try to use it as a time capsule (system preferences, time capsule on) my hard drive does not show up as one of the options???? My external drive and the data that is already on the time capsule show up, but not my iMac hard drive. So my second question is How do I get my time machine to see my hard drive or is there another way to get my files to move over there? I realize I'm in trouble, any help would be greatly appreciated. I've tried to provide as much info as possible. Maybe there is something obvious I'm missing.

My own response, or rather an update: I took the computer up to the Genius Bar - my hard drive is bad. They are going to try to rescue my data. For those of you reading this with a similar problem, make an appointment and go to the Apple Store if you can. Mike, my personal "genius" for this encounter, said that stressing the machine when the hard drive is going bad just risks damaging it more. If you potentially have a hardware issue, take it and let them determine what is wrong. They have tools and diagnostics most of us wouldn't know how to use if we read about them here - and they have ways of retrieving data (I hope) that most of us do not have. Please note that disk utility said my hard drive was ok, but the diagnostics they did showed that in fact my hard drive was much less than ok, but it was still "mounting" hence the disk utility reporting it was ok. It is over an hour drive for me to get to the Apple store, and I only wish I had gone sooner.

What's happening with my iMac hard drive?

I was on Disk Utility the other day, and a message was displayed on my screen. It said... "This drive has a hardware problem and cannot be repaired. Back up as much data as possible and replace the disk. See an authorised Apple dealer for more information." This message was referring to my 1TB ST31000528AS internal iMac hard drive. What is causing this problem? Does this have something to do with the fact that BOOTCAMP was installed on my computer? What should I do?
Thanks in advance.

Contact Apple or your local AASP > Apple - Support - iMac - Service FAQ

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

IMac Hard Drive Setup Recommendations/ Thunderbolt

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for