Inexpensive Internal RAID

1 G5 Jive 3 harddrive mount for G5 (all cabling incl) - $87
1 Firmtek SeriTek/1S2 SATA150 Card - $69
1 Maxtor 6H500F0 500GB SATA300 Drive - $285
While it is a 500GB storage solution at the moment, I could add another 500GB, implement a software RAID 0/1, and have a 1 TB RAID!
My native Mac SATA has my 250 GB OS Boot drive and a 250GB drive. I am going to use that 250GB now for my Render drive and the new 500GB for my capture drive. Hoping to see some performance improvements as I was using an external FW400 drive for my render drive prior..
Any thoughts/comments are appreciated.

You may laugh about this (decidedly lo-tech solution), but... I have a 1 terabyte raid in my G5 and 2 separate 250 GB drives in the Apple drive slots. So, I have 1.5 terabytes inside my G5.
I have 3 250 gig drives in front of the front fans - where the G5 Jive puts them, but I have them (here's where you laugh) held together (spaced for air flow) with rubber bands and popsicle sticks. The 4th is on a spacer (to keep airflow to the gfx card) in front of the PCI cards.
1 SIIG 4 channel SATA card w/Cables..... $65
4 Maxtor 250GB HDs.........4x$85......... $340
6 popsicle sticks + rubber bands........... free
Total: $405 bucks (plus applicable tax/shipping)
The 4 drives are softraided together in Apple Disk Utility. Temperature is fine. Everything works...
(you can stop laughing now)
Patrick

Similar Messages

How can I set up a Mac pro with internal Raid 5

I have a Mac pro running Leopard server. I would like to format 3 of the drives as an internal Raid 5.
Can this be done?
Can it be done without an internal Raid card?
or
Can it be done if I install a Mac Pro Raid card?
Thanks,
RT

RAID5 or RAID10 or such does require add-on software and / or add-on hardware, yes.
And I'd tend to go toward external RAID storage here, as that is what the most common packages offer and as that tends to have the greatest expansion. This would involve a PCIe RAID controller and external storage here, though Apple does offer the Mac Pro RAID card for use with the internal drives.
The integrated Apple software RAID has RAID0 and RAID1 capabilities. Not RAID5.
As for any additional questions, here's [the FAQ|http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1346] for the Mac Pro RAID card, and here is [the manual|images.apple.com/server/docs/RAIDUtility_UserGuide.pdf].
External RAID can involve Apple Xsan and Promise and related, or third-party FC SAN storage, or any of various third-party direct-attach storage (DAS) options.

Is it possible to create a Windows 7 Partition via Bootcamp while having an internal RAID 0 Setup ?

Is it possible to create a Windows 7 Partition via Bootcamp while having an internal RAID 0 Setup ?

Yes, just not on the RAID. Boot Camp Assistant will only partition a single drive containing OS X. You cannot partition a RAID array.

Internal RAID Drives Disappeared from Desktop & Finder

A few days ago, one of my two internal mirrored RAID sets no longer showed on the desktop or in the Finder Sidebar. A day later, the other internal RAID set disappeared from desktop and sidebar. The two remaining internal non-RAID drives show up as do two external drives. All internal and external hard drives still show under Disk Utility and Photoshop Bridge CS3.
I checked Finder Preferences and boxes are checked to show internal and external drives on the desktop and sidebar. I looked at the drive detail under Disk Utility and nothing looks wrong with the two RAID sets ON-LINE. I unmounted one RAID set and re-mounted without any change. I tried unchecking the two preference boxes to not show the drives and rebooted, rechecking the boxes and rebooting and nothing changed on the desktop or sidebar.
Does anyone have any suggestions to resolve this?

Well our invisible drives problem is resolved but it's not the solution that I'd hoped for.
We visited the Genius Bar at a local Apple store and they denied any knowledge of problems with invisible drives in Macs and discounted my reports from Mac forums.
I went home and ordered a new 1tb Seagate drive. When it arrived, I installed it in bay 2, copied each invisible drive to the new drive one-at-a-time, broke my two sets of internal mirrored drives, erased all the affected drives and reloaded them. Now all drives are visible on the Desktop and Finder again.
I'm hoping that the disappearing drive problem doesn't surface again but view this as an unresolved Apple issue. Now I can look at other mass storage options for future growth.

Time Machine slow when backing up internal RAID

I've had some issues for some time now with Time Machine taking forever to backup information from my internal RAID in my MacPro. When I say forever, I don't think Time Machine is able to back up every hour, even if it's just doing the 44 mb backup. That can sometimes take 3 hours. I just determined today that it was specifically having trouble with the RAID. I copied a bunch of information to my OS drive, and WHAM, time machine was flying! I primarily work off of my RAID as this machine is used for video editing. The RAID is an 8tb RAID 0. The time machine volume is a GTech GSpeed 9TB RAID 5 connected via eSATA.

Bump for a monday, and hopeful for some replies.

ML110 G6 Internal RAID issues

Heads Up:
Doing a manual install of NOWS SBE using the standard SLES 10 SP3 and OES 2 SP3 Media.
The internal raid (RAID 1+0) which is called
Smart Array B110i SATA RAID is not working.
SLES 10 SP3 with out using a driver disks, see each disk as a device /sda1 and /sdb1 and not the one logical drive.
Done
Fireware Updates etc
Found a USB floppy drive and used the only disk image HP have during the install this makes it worst and gives you a "No hard disk storage error"
Got a SR open with Novell.
HP at present are being unhelpful, the server is listed on the
Novell support on HP Proliant Servers
Will keep you posted.
Adam

Originally Posted by itec
Heads Up:
Doing a manual install of NOWS SBE using the standard SLES 10 SP3 and OES 2 SP3 Media.
The internal raid (RAID 1+0) which is called
Smart Array B110i SATA RAID is not working.
SLES 10 SP3 with out using a driver disks, see each disk as a device /sda1 and /sdb1 and not the one logical drive.
Done
Fireware Updates etc
Found a USB floppy drive and used the only disk image HP have during the install this makes it worst and gives you a "No hard disk storage error"
Got a SR open with Novell.
HP at present are being unhelpful, the server is listed on the
Novell support on HP Proliant Servers
Will keep you posted.
Adam
Hi Adam,
Thanks for the Heads-up.
You said you're doing a manual install from the SLES10-SP3 media so this is not really a NOWS SBE issue, although it would certainly affect NOWS SBE customers.
Have you checked to see if there is any info related to this issue in the SLES: Install-Boot forum? I seem to remember seeing some posts that reference the ML110 G6 but I can't be sure.
There are a lot of knowledgeable folks who watch that forum. They may have some experience with that machine or be able to offer some suggestions.

Shutting down Mac Pro with an internal RAID

Hi,
Since I got my new machine a month ago I have never had cause to turn it off except when the power failed once! Everything was OK on that occasion. It has the Apple RAID card controlling four apple 1TB drives in RAID 0 for speed importing HD footage. My system is on a separate drive fitted in the second optical drive bay. It all works fine but I just want to check that I will not lose my RAID if I shut the computer down for a prolonged period, in this case about two weeks whilst I am away. I know that this length of time would allow the the RAID Cache battery to run down. I am not sure exactly what this battery is doing perhaps someone would explain it to me in words of not more than two syllables (I make films, I am not an IT expert)! If the computer remains attached to the power socket will the battery still keep charged even though the computer is off? Whatam I likely to find when I power up again?
Any advice would be much appreciated as I can't seem to find an answer to this on the forums.
Thanks,
David

Thanks for the quick replies. I take the point about the UPS. I am doing some research still on that one. We rarely have power failures but when we do they generally last longer than most affordable UPS units can last. The last one which I referred to lasted three hours and then went of a second time (fortunately before I got around to restarting the computer)! I thought that it was possible to get units that will initiate a proper shutdown of the computer? Is this so?
Just to clarify your point Malcolm, I bought the RAID card because it is my intention to reformat the internal RAID in RAID5 for some safety when I eventually get a larger external unit which can handle HD data rates in RAID5. If I do that though are you saying that I would never be able to turn the computer off for longer than the cache battery will last or will a proper shutdown still write everything properly to disc?
It does sound like a UPS is a must before any external RAID array is added to allow some form of shutdown procedure.
Thanks again

Internal RAID moved to External enclosures... will it work?

i currently have an internal RAID in my macpro using a pair of 320GB drives... I'm about to purchase a pair of 500GB drives that i would like to replace the 320's with. my question is, can i buy 2 external (e)sata enclosures, or even usb enclosures, pop out the 2 internal drives, hook them up to the enclosures and have the RAID still function as it should, so i can then put the new 500's into the machine, format them to a RAID and then transfer all the stuff on the old one off. or i guess the other option is to format the 2 500's using the external enclosures into a RAID, make the file transfers and then do the drive swap...
and again is this possible using a usb interface? i don't have a sata card (yet) and was hoping to add that later after i get the drives swapped...
much thanks

Yes, but I would only use a Firewire enclosure (you'll want a two drive enclosure.) USB is much too slow. FW800 would be much much faster.
Sources for enclosures:
CoolDrives.com
WiebeTech.com
MacSales.com
CalDrives.com
FirewireDirect.com

Internal RAID 0 with 3 or 2 Drives

Hello, iv been snooping around the forums looking for info on various internal RAID set ups...
I do a lot of editing with FCP but a do a lot of complicated After Effects stuff too.
I am considering the following...
set up 1
3x 1TB drives, RAID 0
vs.
set up 2
2x 1TB drives, in a RAID 0
with the other bay used as a render drive.
my question is, with a three drive RAID 0 would my read and write times be faster or slower than a 2 drive Media drive and one drive dedicated to writing for rendering...
any shared experience would greatly be appreciated, or suggestions...
thanks
also i was considering the WD caviar Black drives, any good or bad expeirence with those?

Thanks for the links. i am considering this option...
sdd in the lower drive bay.
and some kind of raid with the other 4 bays... id like to do a raid 5 internally. is that possible without a controller, or how would i go about doing that?
i also had one other question...
i was thinking about getting this external LaCie 1 Tb rugged drive for my itunes, iphoto, you know things that do not have to do with current work, maybe finished projects(not project files but final renders), other private stuff.
my question is, would a 5400 rpm drive be fast enough for such tasks. like playing an uncompressed quicktime... the drive is only like 120 euros with esata and usb 2, but its only 5400 rpm. i like the OWC drives from the links you gave me, but i live in Berlin germany, and it would kind of be a hassel to ship all these drives... but i am going to the USA in like 3 months so i could wait if i need to...
any suggestions?

Expand volume on Internal RAID

Hello,
I set up our new Xserve with three 1TB internal disks. I booted it up, and did all the initial setup. However, I made a booboo I think when migrating the volume to RAID....
Once it was up and running, I went into the RAID admin util, and told it to migrate to a RAID 5 volume.
Unfortunately, it just migrated the one disk size to the new volume, so I now have a 1.78TB RAID set, with a (slightly under) 1TB volume, and 800 odd gigs of free space.
Question is, is there any way to expand that volume out to use the entire space, or do I have to start from scratch?...

OK, well, for the benefit of others, heres how I solved it..
Got a 500G firewire disk, and used Carbon Copy Cloner to create a bootable volume on the fw disk.
Rebooted from the fw disk, and as a belts and braces approach, did a block level backup of the server disk to a .dmg file on the fw disk.
Once completed, I went into the raid utility, zapped the entire raid and recreated it with just one volume.
I then used CCC to restore the block level .dmg file back onto the newly configured raid and rebooted off the raid.
Job done. The entire process took about 45 minutes. Admittedly, there was only about 14 gig of data to move about, but was very quick all things considered.

HDD setup - Internal RAID, External RAID or single discs

I know variations on this question have been done to death on this forum, but I'm still struggling to understand how to apply it to my specific requirements and hardware.
I am looking to optimise the performance/speed of my Hackintosh for video editing on Premiere and grading on Resolve Lite, Colorista and AE.
I work mainly with Pro-Res files, sometimes with AVCHD, and occasionally with raw.
My Hackintosh specs are as follows:
Part
Component
Processor
4th Generation Haswell Core i7-4770 - Quad Core 3.4GHz (3.9GHz Turbo Boost)
Motherboard
GIGABYTE 8 Series GA-Z87N-WIFI
Memory
16GB Crucial Ballistix Tactical 1600MHz
Primary Graphics
Zotac Nvidia GTX 770 - 2GB Video Memory, 1059MHz Core Clock, 7010MHz Memory Clock
Secondary Graphics
Intel HD 4600 Graphics
Maximum Video Resolution
2560x1600
Hard Drive
240GB CRUCIAL SSD 32MB Cache (OS and Programs)
Hard Drive
1TB TOSHIBA SATA III 7200RPM 32MB Cache
Network Card
Integrated 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet LAN
Wifi
Atheros AR9287 802.11BGN 300Mbps
Sound
High Definition 7.1 Channel Audio
Power Supply
Corsair CX600M 600w Modular PSU, 80 PLUS Bronze
Chassis
Bitfenix Prodidgy
External Ports
1 x PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse Port
3 x HDMI Ports
3 x DVI Ports
1 x Display Port
2 x Antenna Connectors
6 x USB 3.0/2.0 Ports
2 x USB 2.0/1.1 Ports
2 x Ethernet Ports
1 x Optical S/PDIF Out Connector
5 x Audio Jacks
Operating System
OS X Mavericks
I have also purchased a USB3 Lacie 4Big Quadra 8TB external RAID.
I currently run the OS and programs from the SSD, and have partitioned the 1TB SATA III HDD, using one partition for scratch and the other for projects, media and exports.
My question is, what would be my best solution for optimising performance?
1. Buying a couple more HDDs, installing them internally and striping along with the existing disc as a 3-disc RAID 0, using the Lacie as backup/storage only?
2. Buying a couple more HDDs, installing them internally as single discs (SSD for OS & Apps; HDD1 for Scratch; HDD2 for Media and Projects; HDD3 for Exports), again using the Lacie for backup/storage only.
3. Using the Lacie as an external 4-disc RAID 0, and the existing internal HDD as storage. Buying further HDD(s) for backup.
Also, if RAID is the answer, what is the best configuration in terms of which disc(s) to point Premiere to? i.e does Premiere treat the RAID as a single disc for i/o purposes, creating a bottleneck with high bandwidths, or does it act as it would if different file types were pointed at separate individual discs?
Many thanks in advance for helping the IT dunce!

Start here: Tweakers Page and continue reading all the articles there.

Recommendations for 3rd party internal RAID

I have an octo 2.26GHz mac pro.
Interested to hear from anyone who has purchased a 3rd party RAID controller which would satisfy my reqs:
support OS X & Windows -- doesnt need to be at the same time -- so long as I can restripe that's ok.
OS X needs to be SL.
Windows needs to be Server 2008
Onboard cache preferred.
Internal SATA connectors required (i.e. not SAS)
Must support AHCI, NCQ
Must not require BIOS for setup (since the mac doesn't have a BIOS).
Any experience RAID 0 with SSD's preferred., e.g. how many & what read/write/latency are you getting.
TIA

Some people have been happy running 2008 in Fusion, even multiple VMs.
Unless you really need hardware RAID5, you can have and use 5 internal drives, and there are some fine external RAID controllers.
Take a look at the multitude of reviews on AMUG.com

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.

Removeing internal RAID to external housing?

Hello!
So, I have a couple drives formatted as a striped RAID and want to move them out (to make room for new drives) - can I put them in some external housing as is and expect the housing to understand that they are formatted as a Striped RAID?
I am trying to avoid cloning everything off to a single drive and re-formatting the two old RAID drives.
Thanks in advance, Don

I'll say this: clone or backup, even under the best of circumsances if you have data on them.
Yes, it should be fine.
Why not look into G5 Jive then, and keep them as internal. You'd have to buy a controller unless you already are running some external drives.
A Sonnet Temp and 4-5 drive enclosure, even if you only are using two drives now.

Internal RAID 0 Speed Nehalem?

simple question, and I searched first but cannot find.
Whats the read/write speed adding 2 1TB WD caviar Black HDD internally setup as RAID0?
I just got the new MP 2.26 Nehalem, with 1 640GB drive. Need speed for HD video editing, but cannot fork out for an external RAID, and eSATA card

I know xbench isn't the best, but I dont know what else to use. Here's my results. note, I installed 4 Caviar Black 1TB drives setup as RAID 0. The fourth drive was installed in the optical bay, the OS 640GB drive is still in its original slot1. I am wondering if thats why its not as fast as it should be??
Results 230.79
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.6.1 (10B504)
Physical RAM 16384 MB
Model MacPro4,1
Drive Type RAID
CPU Test 132.48
GCD Loop 243.82 12.85 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 108.73 2.58 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 80.59 2.66 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 222.92 38.82 Mops/sec
Thread Test 753.52
Computation 838.53 16.99 Mops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 684.16 29.43 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 242.52
System 253.90
Allocate 353.16 1.30 Malloc/sec
Fill 158.42 7702.90 MB/sec
Copy 374.29 7730.80 MB/sec
Stream 232.11
Copy 240.24 4962.02 MB/sec
Scale 224.58 4639.72 MB/sec
Add 236.12 5029.90 MB/sec
Triad 228.16 4881.00 MB/sec
Quartz Graphics Test 193.39
Line 148.46 9.88 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 189.73 56.64 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 162.50 13.25 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 173.81 4.38 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 515.25 32.23 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 77.10
Spinning Squares 77.10 97.81 frames/sec
User Interface Test 279.40
Elements 279.40 1.28 Krefresh/sec
Disk Test 247.07
Sequential 202.59
Uncached Write 412.05 252.99 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 375.05 212.21 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 79.78 23.35 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 472.53 237.49 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 316.58
Uncached Write 147.39 15.60 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 708.42 226.79 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 418.03 2.96 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 488.68 90.68 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Inexpensive Internal RAID

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