RAID 5 Internal

Is it okay to create a RAID 5 array with all four internal hard drives on the Mac Pro, using the Apple RAID card, and use it as the startup volume? Thanks.

On average most 4 bay multiplexing units, which almost all are unless you get a SAS 4bay, the max speed will be around 230MB/s with an NTFS partition. That is just the max available when you split 1 e-sata channel like that. Now HFS+ performs better than NTFS so I would not be surprised if it's a little higher than 230MB but it wont be a large amount. 245MB/s sounds about right for a normal HFS+ increase over the 230MB/s for NTFS. The 10K results is just from the lower random access time which helps.
Eric
ADK

Similar Messages

Best Throughput for RAID - Internal SATA vs. PCI RAID Card

Hi, we're upgrading our old server, which has been on an upgraded G4. We put 3 SATA drives in it, connected to a Highpoint 1820a RAID card running RAID 5.
We're moving this to an older G5 1.6 GHz model (2003). It currently has 2 internal SATA drive bays, but I know can be expanded with an adapter kit. It also has just plain PCI slots (not PCI-X or PCIe).
So I'm wondering what would provide better performance (throughput I guess):
• Using the 2 internal bays with a software RAID 1?
• Putting our old Highpoint RAID card in the PCI slot and running RAID 1 or possibly RAID 5 (with another drive)?
I know the RAID card doesn't use the processor for RAID functions, but I think in a RAID 1 it's fairly minimal, correct? I'm mostly wondering if the older basic PCI slot would bet the bottleneck in a fast system compared to the onboard SATA controllers?
THANKS!

Well, we're most concerned with data security and reliability. We're not streaming video or anything else that would demand extreme throughput. The server is mostly serving files to 4-5 users. So I imagine the performance gains would only be noticed when opening/closing files off the server, correct?
And we already own the Highpoint card, which has 8 internal SATA ports, so we'll probably use this. It works fine on PCI bus. So we can run this with 4 drives in either two RAID 1s (boot & files); a RAID 5, or a RAID 10.
We'll probably stick with Western Digital or Seagate 'enterprise' SATA drives, such as the WD RE3.
So, do you think we would see much real-world difference between the different RAID options (RAID 1 software, RAID 1 hardware, RAID 5 hardware, RAID 10 hardware)?
Thanks!

Looking for some RAID storage ideas...can anyone help?

Hi, I'm looking for some recommendations out there. I'm going to be getting a new PowerMac tower with a cinema display and will also be looking to get some RAID-type storage for it so that I can do lots of video editing and photo storage.
Ideally, I'd like to get a rack-type storage with swappable drives much like the XServe RAID but I don't need it to have server capabilities like the XServe does, i.e. I'm not going online with anything. This is purely going to be working as an external storage tower that two adjeacent computers will be directly firewired to.
Obviously, the XServe would fit this, but like I said, I don't need the computer/server capability and also would not want to spend $6000 just for a single TB of storage that the XServe has. I'm thinking more along the lines of a swappable drive rack system like the old Avid systems used to have 10 years ago. Does anyone know if Apple makes such a thing? Or if any third party companies do?
Thanks.

If you are using typical DV cameras you don't need striped RAID to capture the video or edit it either. And striped means you lose one drive you lose two drives worth of data.
The LaCie Bigger and Biggest disks may be suitable solutions, they are hardware RAIDed internally and come in 1 and 1.5TB models, using FW 800 they are plenty fast for video.

Raid Configuration

Hi, wonder if anyone can advise. I have a 2008 Mac Pro, and currently have a 320GB disk (partitioned) for OS and a scratch disk, and a 1TB disk for my data. I have just bought a couple more 1TB drives, and was thinking about setting up Raid 0 or Raid 1 on them. I know that raid ) provides greater speed, and that mirrored (raid 1) provides resilience. While I have less data, I was thinking that I might use Raid 1, but was after some advice because I want to ensure my machine runs as fast as possible.
Could anyone give me options I have with 3x1TB drives, I would like to keep at least a TB for data at the moment...
Many thanks

I think 80% of the problems reported were from OEM units, not retail.
Too bad these don't fit in Mac Pro
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=459&language=en
This would be nice in RE2 (WD always releases RE series after extra testing and work on firmware)
http://www.wdc.com/th/products/products.asp?driveid=394
Use 1TB drives for backup sets, and then go for stripped RAID internal, though most tests show a boot stripped RAID doesn't always make real world improvement, sometimes it does, sometimes you just want the fastest possible boot drive (first outer third of 1TB drive and use the rest for static archives or something).
So I am still partial to low latency Raptor.
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=189

Will OSX software Raid-0 on external drive be regonized elseware?

Are RAID setups created in Disk util recognized in other computers. Say i have 2 external drives (over eSata on my 08 mac pro) in a raid 0 from disk util, can I plug these two drives into another mac pro and have them work?
Basically, are software raid setups from disk utilily readible from all macs?

Both systems would have to have their own controllers or ports, but yes, they should move and work just the same on both.
There are Port Multiplier cases and controllers, and there are the 2 ODD ports people use, or direct connect SATA external controllers.
You can even create a RAID internal or external and move it and it will work, or change the drive bay and order of your drives, the RAID will still work and be intact.
What often doesn't work are eSATA/FW or eSATA/USB cases.
Mac Pro Discussion focus on using and expanding is here:
http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=194

RAID tips please!

I work in photoshop on 5-10GB files. Just bought the 8core mac pro with 32GB of RAM. Opening and saving files is not going much faster than it did on my G5. I was planning to get the Wiebetech xtr400-QR (built in RAID controller) with 4 1TB drives set to RAID 10 and connected via ESATA, with one set of two drives kept off site. I need continuous fast access to all my files (about 1-1.5TB), and for these files to be constantly backed up without slowing me down.
However, I'm wondering... What if I installed 4 internal drives into my MacPro, and RAIDed these as RAID 5 instead and mirrored this raid set to an external unit? Or is RAIDing internal drives a bad idea? if so, why?
Sorry I'm brainstorming here. Any ideas of the best way to access my huge library fast and safely, would be really great. I also need the ability to take a copy of everything off-site. Ideally, when off-site, I would also be able to access the files on this "off-site" duplicate, which I just found out I won't be able to using the Wiebetech, unless I have another identical Wiebetech unit with the exact same RAID controller off-site as well....

See how the questions grow!
Time for dinner for me.
So many people want to use dual/quad interface enclosures. They don't work well. They have problems.
The link to AMUG and to mbean comments on RAID are excellent in the other thread link.
RAID1 is a mirror. You break a RAID10 and you don't just walk off with a copy.
Create a backup copy of what you need.
Some people have 4-10TB of projects they want online. And use a 2nd array as backup for the first.
If you think you can take a project etc off site, then it sounds like a job for a portable hard drive. Does it fit on a single 1-2TB drive?
When you work on some files or project, copy them to your scratch array, that is temp space that gets used only for edits, is erased between jobs, projects, as you work, AND those files are SAVED TO a 2nd location.
Think of how long it takes to save to disk a 2-4GB file. You want to be able to load fast, edit on scratch even faster, and to be saving to RAID location - as you work and reach a step or point - SCRATCH/WORK area - which is faster.
There is a whole forum area on MacGurus devoted to this and more about Photoshop, with tips, and there is a bench utility to test real files on your system to gauge how well your setup is delivering.
If I want to pull a drive out of a mirror array, I also want that to be a simple, but 3-drives, mirror. Not two, and it takes time and a "hit" to rebuild with a new 3rd drive.
A mirror is not a substitute for backups.
And SoftRAID ( http://www.softraid.com ) has a better mirror technology than Apple's.
But if you plan to use RAID6 (or 5) I would never plan to pull a drive.
you could write your files to a dual-drive mirror and delete the array and take one drive out. THAT is where I see a nice $199 dual drive hot-swap case from FirmTek fitting in.
If you work with 4GB file, how have you been working on it? what system? how much RAM? With 2GB for system, 3GB for CS4, and room for file in memory, plus cache, you would be using 12GB RAM. And you would probably be seeing pageouts, swap files growing, and a lot of disk I/O if you don't. They call that 'thrashing' - using disk space due to lack of RAM and penalizing performance on Mac.

Recommendations for RAID enclosure

I'm looking for a RAID enclosure with the following specifications:
2 drive
Hot swap
RAID level 1 or 0 (hardware RAID)
Internal power supply (no power brick)
I've purchased Wiebetech RAIDTech RT8-0 enclosures in the past and I love them, but it doesn't seem Wiebetech makes them anymore.
Any suggestions?

Pl do not post duplicates - Best Performance for apex over Linux+HW RAID - continue the discussion in your earlier thread

Capture problems please help

I was using FCE 1.0, an old Mitsubishi U70 twin digital SVHS VCR with S-video out cables, a Canopus ADVC-55 converter and my G4 running OS 10.3.9. I was able to capture just fine. Then I upgraded. I upgraded to FCE HD and Quicktime v.7. Now I cannot capture using FCE HD. I can however capture using iMovie 3.03.
I am getting a warning when loading FCE-HD: "Unable to locate the following external devices: Apple Firewire (720x480)"
When I continue and finish launching the app I go into easy setup and select DV NTSC DV Converter. When I hit the setup button I get the same message as above and it asks if I want to continue but set the external device selection to none. I have tried selecting both of the Firewire Basic settings for NTSC but when I do and then attempt to capture FCE quits.
I have disconnected all cables, turned on and off decks and restarted computers. Nothing seems to be working.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
G4 Dual 1Ghz Mac OS X (10.3.9) 70GB and 300GB RAID internal, 1.5GB RAM

Might be this issue:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301852
Al

Hard drives sleep - not energy saver settings

I have two(2) different Quad 2.7 Pro Mac computers, both with 2 500GB Seagate drives mirror raided internally and Sonnet Fusion D500 SATA enclosures with 5 500GB seagates RAID striped.
They all fall asleep after inactivity, and it take several seconds for the drives to spin back up. The energy saver is set to never. I even tried turing it on, restarting, turing it off, reseting, but it did not help.
I've removed the internal RAID and the external still sleeps, and vice versa.
My only thought is it it the seagate drives. They are refurbished baracuda 7200.9 drives.
Any ideas?

hello,
i'm experiencing the same issue. i have 4 internal raptors in RAID0 and 4 external WD drives in a PM enclosure and have found that they too sleep as you mentioned.
i checked the energy saver and the box is unchecked to "put drives to sleep when possible" also...
i installed Leopard the other day when i got the new enclosure and external equipment - clean install - so i don't know if it would do the same in Tiger...
any suggestions, or is this normal for exterior storage - regardless if it is SATA or not?

Can't I/O select a keyword clip?

I have a bunch of clips in an event. I have gone through these clips making selections and assigning keywords to the selections (such as "man plus car" or " happy face". In some cases I have assigned keywords to the whole clips too (such as "day 1"). Some selections I have assigned two or more keywords (eg "man and car", "happy face") and the selection might be within a whole clip with an assigned keyword or within a larger selection with an associated keyword.
I presume all that is quite standard. I can now click on a single keyword in the event list and see all clips associated with that keyword - including some clips that might be associated with other key words as well as the one I selected.
So, I click on a keyword (happy face) and see a list of clips. I then select a clip , play it through and decide I want just a few seconds in the middle. I can't make a selection. When I try to drag a yellow box the clip selection changes to the first clip in the list. Using I and O key commands does not work properly either. If I try to edit the resulting yellow box then the same thing happens: suddenly my clip changes selection to the first clip in the list.
I find this really odd. Can anyone work out what I am either doing wrong or what I need to do to sort things out? (Delete prefs?)
This weird behaviour has also lead to crashing of fcp and usual error reporting to apple.
I'm editing native hdv on a three year old macpro with latest OS and fcp x. 16GB memory and non raid internal sata disks.

Thanks for the response.
I have trashed prefs and its no different. I have also repaired permissions for good measure.
I think I have honed down the issue:
Take a long(ish) clip and assign a key word to the whole thing (eg: wholething)
Make three (say) short selections in the clip and give them each the same key word (eg : smile)
Now in the event library you should see two key word entries for wholething and smile. Click wholething and you will see a single clip in the clip list; click smile keyword and you will see three clips in the clip list. All fine.
Problem:
In List View (it has to be list view!) and with your smile keyword selected in the event library, try clicking on the third clip down. you'll see a film strip thing at the top, fine. now try making a selection. It first appears to work but as you release your mouse or when you press "I" (or "o") the first clip in the list becomes selected and your filmstrip preview changes to reflect this. Also that first clip reveals its associated keywords (which would be both smile and wholething) and the keyword wholething is selected. (as opposed to the parent clip title)
If I click the clip I was trying to work on, my selection is in fact in place and I can press E, W, Q to make an edit etc. But I have to click on that clip to get it selected again!
It works like this every time for me.
It works perfectly fine if I am using filmstrip view. I can select portions of any clip by dragging the mouse or using I/O keys. I can then just press E,W etc to make an edit.
Note: If I remove the all encompassing keyword "wholething", then making selections in keyword clips "smile" works as it should.
It seems you cannot have a keyword encompassing other keywords, if you want things to work properly.
FWIW I am working this way as I have placed the keyword "interview" on every (camera) clip that is interview footage. I have then selected "interview" in the event browser and gone through the clips marking subjects of discussion. these subjects areas were marked pretty roughly and I might only need a few words from one subject on my timeline. I want to select parts of the keyworded clip before updating my timeline (sorry, I mean "project" -ha)!
I hope all this makes sense!

Is It Safe To Use Final Cut Studio 3 With Snow Leopard Yet?

Because of the many problems I heard about using FCS3 with Snow Leopard when they both first came out, I've held off upgrading my OS from 10.5.8. Now that some time has passed, is it safe to install Snow Leopard without worrying about freezes and crashes with using Final Cut Studio 3? Also, have most of the 3d party software developers updated their apps for 10.6? I'd like to install Snow Leopard for my other apps but not at the expense of FCS.

Hi Jeff, Be sure to also check any aftermarket video cards, firwire cards, all pci cards, external drives external raid / internal raid cards... make sure all are SL compatible and supported. I have not yet upgraded because I'm in the middle of post on a documentary. When I do upgrade, it will be a clean install, not an upgrade. Please let me know how it turns out.

Getting red render bar when editing HD multiclips

I'm editing a multiclip music video in Final Cut Pro 6.0.3. The sequence setting matches the size and frame rate of the footage, which is 1920 x 1080, 23.98 fps, using Apple ProRes 422 (HQ).
I have my multiclips all synched and when I put them in to the canvas to begin editing, I get the dreaded red render bar. I have never had this issue before when editing in SD. When I have "Unlimited RealTime" checked I get the yellow/orange bar.
Any advice on how to make this easier and flow faster?? My computer keeps crashing.
and I'm running MacOSX 10.5.2 on a Dual 2.5 GHz G5 with 1.5 GB DDR SDRAM.
Thanks in advance!

2 or 2.5 gigs of ram would help (IIRC, 2.5 is all FCP will utilitze).
We just had a thread about this issue on an iMac. You might want to review it...
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9091740#9091740
Where is your media stored and how many streams in your multiclip. How is the media connected...FW400/800/eSata/RAID (internal/external)?
Increased ram may help, but I'm inclined to think you could be maxing out your drive throughput.

G4 PowerBook playback

Hope this isn't OT
I have to show work on a borrowed 15" G4 PB - not sure if it's 1.5 or 1.67 GHz.
Will use a portable FW 400 drive.
I'll export 720p from FCP timeline, the material is in DVCProHD.
Will that PB play back DVCProHD @ 720p or is using HDV 720/ 30p a safer choice ?
(I could do H.264 but takes forever to encode even on my quad and disk space is not an issue...)
Thanks
Sam Wells

If the original footage is DVCPRO HD, by god keep it at DVCPRO HD! Going to HDV is a serious downgrade...horrid codec compared to DVCPRO HD.
As Thrill says, the powerbook and drive will be fine. You'll only get 1 stream (one video layer) with this setup. Get a G-Raid or CalDigit FW800 drive with two drives raided internally, and you will get 3 streams.
Shane

URGENT : Update OS to Maverick, won´t restart

Recently updated the OS to Maverick.   First thing I noticed is that the new OS does not recognize the RAID (internal disc raid + Apple Raid card).
Then I restarted the computer but it got stuck forever on a light grey screen.   No beachball, no error. no nothing.
This is a 2009 (if I remember well) 4.1 Mac Pro, Dual 2.26 Quad Core Xeon processor, 32GB Ram, Apple Raid card, AJA Kona LHI video card.
I have a vital job in progress on this computer.   It´s both in the RAID as well as a safety copy in the start up disc Macintosh HD.
Please advice on how to get this Mac started.    One thing that comes to my mind is to disconnect the PCI Raid card and try restart, but I guess might mean to loss all the data.
Please advice, need urgent Help !!!!!

Have you tried safe mode boot: just pressing and holding shift key down with starting the machine (powering on), at least from the "chime" sound for a few seconds (when a progress bar start to show you can release the shift key)?
If that won't work, have you tried "single user mode" (Cmd+S) returning a black screen with white text (kinda startup log to show eventual problems)?
Can you start your Mac in "Recovery" mode (Cmd+R) if all above fails?
When all your machinery is switched off, taking out the RAID card should not make you lose any data. However, since the data is on the disks that are connected to the card you might not be able to see the data without the card being plugged in. But since you seem to have a safety copy, you might still access the data?
If you have good reason to suspect the card, taking it out might help to see your mac start again (without the volumes on the RAID disks though). But I would only do so when all above (safe mode, single user mode, recovery mode) fails. On my machines just starting up in safe mode, shutting down and then start the machine helped quite often, fortunately.
How does your Mac start (at all) without the RAID?

TIME MACHINE EXTREMELY SLOW. AS IN S-L-O-W.

configuration: 1 Raid internal hd of 1.8 TB, 1 TB backup internal hd using retrospect. 2TB external HD for time machine and copy of home file from
computer's hd. 650gb external hd with clone of computer's hd.
running Time Machine on a 650GB Lacie external hd via fw800 for 6-9 months.
ran out of space. dumped old backups. still needed more space.
moved 250GB of a video archive onto internal raid drives (1.8TB) and backed up
via retrospect to another internal 1TB drive.
made a clone of my computers HD onto the 650GB external drive.
ran time machine onto the new 2TB external drive. as no previous backups were
recognized i did a new first time backup to time machine which took approx 12 hours. made a copy of my home file from my computers HD onto that same external 2TB drive.
now time machine is running backups at 1GB per minute speed as if it is doing an initial backup again. it only used to run for a few minutes. what is happening?

You might want to try formatting your time machine drive and starting again. And yes Time Machine only copies the changes that are made. However, judging by your screen pic and the size of your hard drives, I would assume that you are in the movie business? Therefore I would bet that you deal with constantly changing movie files and pictures that are relatively quite large in size. Since these have "changed" they would be re backed up. Also since you are dealing with quite large quantities of data, it would only make sense that time machine would take a while. One thing you could try is in the time machine preferences pane, click on Options and tell time machine what you don't want to be backed up. I dunno how raid drives work but it might be possible that one of the clones that you created on those drives was backed up too.
Steve

QuickTime error -50, (only on Mac Pro workstation)

Does anyone know what QuickTime error -50 means?
I'm getting this constantly on my Mac Pro 3.0Ghz workstation, (in Batch Monitor.) At the end of encoding about 3 hours of footage into iPod format, Batch Monitor begins to error on about 3/4 of the encodes left to do, beyond the 3 hours of footage that have already been processed.
I was told, (by Apple support) that it may be something to do with the hard drives, but they all check out just fine. I also have a G5/quad running the exact same version of compressor and there are no errors during processing, (in batch monitor) no matter how much footage is processed.
Here's my hard drive configuration on the Mac Pro as well as the G5/quad.
Boot drive, (running all of my Apps) internal drive on Mac Pro.
Xserve RAID 10TB, (used for source movie storage, in 10bit uncompressed format, AJA I/o codec.)
2nd drive, (used for storage of reference movies stored on RAID) internal drive on Mac Pro.
3rd drive, (used for storing final encoded movies) internal drive on Mac Pro.\
All software and OS X are new installs, (from original disks.) The drives have been completely erased, formated and new installs of all software, using nothing from the original installs on the Mac Pro, as well as updated to all current versions of software and still the problem persists only on the Mac Pro 3.0Ghz, (4 core) workstation.
Any guidance on the source of the QuickTime -50 error would be appreciated.

Thanks for the reply.
I tried a Google search, but to no avail, (no mention of QT error -50.)
I also looked at the error codes list you provided, but it would appear that those codes are related to OS X operation, (unrelated to QuickTime errors) but thanks for trying!
This is a very strange issue that has plagued me for as long as I have had this Mac Pro. I can take those files that failed with QT error -50, run them again and as long as there part of the first 3 hours of footage that is encoded on the Mac Pro, they will encode just fine. It is after that, that the wheels fall off and the QT -50 errors begin. Very frustrating as you can imagine.
I'm forced to run no more that three hours of footage at a time, limiting over the weekend encodes, on large batches of footage that needs to be transcoded into iPod format.
But again, thanks for trying, it is appreciated!

RAID 5 Internal

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