RAID options, SSD disks and others....

Hi!
This is not exactly topic for expanding my mac pro... This is more "How to expand my upcoming mac pro".
There are couple of things I'm constantly fighting. Memory and disk-speed. I absolutely hate it when I see spinning beach ball on the screen and only thing I hear is the wild hard-drive trashing ...
Now when I finally upgrade my power mac G5 to Mac Pro I'm confronted with myriad of choices:
Memory is easy - 12Gb BTO option 6x 2Gb sticks. This should satisfy all the requirements. Enough to work with. Enough sticks so it really is DDR and so on.
Hard-drives are the real pain. First of all I'd like to ask couple of questions...
a) Does OS X and disk-utily support making striped RAID-disks and use those as boot-disk? Idea was to install two fast SSD disks and stripe those. They have sufficient long MTBF so I feel confident using them striped for increased performance. Performance is blazing fast for boot-disk which directly translates into nice user-experience since boot-up is fast and opening programs is almost instant.
b) Performance characteristics on OS X disk-utily versus SoftRAID. Are there any noticeable differences? Disk-utility driver is single-threaded while SoftRAID is multi-threaded. How about creating boot-disks with SoftRAID?
c) How about using SSD drives and hardware RAID-card from apple? Any experiences with this?
At the moment I think the setup would be something like this:
4x 1Tb disk-drives with RAID-5 for mass-storage
2x SSD drives with RAID-0 for OS
Downside is that I think this would require both hardware RAID-card for RAID-5 and possibly software-RAID if hardware RAID-card doesn't recognize SSD drives. Or if I wan't to be able to boot into windows which I'm forced to do sometimes (Note! booting windows in Mac is against my beliefs!) then I'd need to leave small partition free on the SSD drive(s) and not include that in RAID-setup.
So satisfying the following is pretty hard:
- RAID-5 for 4 internal hard-drives used for mass-storage
- RAID-0 for 2 SSD-drives used for OS and applications
- Ability to dual-boot into Windows via bootcamp

a: If you make a striped RAID array (RAID0) with Disk Utility you can boot from it. I'm doing the same right now, with 2 OCZ Vertex SSD's.
c: Officially, the RAID card only supports drives Apple sells. Besides that, it would be a shame to use SSD's with the Apple RAID card, as it is slow. If you have 3 SSD's in a RAID0 setup they will be faster than the RAID card can handle (the RAID card's maximum speed is somewhere near 533MB/s, look up the exact number in the Apple Online Store).
I don't think you can use Bootcamp when using the RAID card. In any case, you can't start Windows using Bootcamp from a disk that is connected to the RAID card.
Also, you don't have enough connectors for 4 internal hard drives and 2 SSD's if you want to keep your optical drive.
You could go for a third party RAID controller, but then I'd wait with my purchase until more is known about the compatibility of those cards with Snow Leopard. Also, this probably won't work with Bootcamp.

Similar Messages

How to set autosave option in flash and other Application

hi,
How to set automaticaly autosave and backup option in flash and other Application?
Thanks for reading!

The Flash forums are here:
http://forums.adobe.com/community/flash
This forum is only for discussions on the forums themselves.
And when you post there, don't forget to add enough information about your specific setup.

SSD disks and swap

I know this has been discussed numbers of times but still I find it confusing. My new PC will have a SSD (and no traditional hard disk). My question is what to do with the swap and especially the swapiness parameter? Is it really a good idea to reduce it? How the default value of 60 has been decided?
What confuse me is that I have seen too many posts that say, roughly, that we need to avoid any write to the SSD in order to spare it; often to the point we can wonder if the SSD will remain useful... I have seen that SSD supports 100000 write cycles; with a 120GB SSD, you will thus need to write 12000 Tera (12 peta) before it fails. It is clear to me that small things (like putting /var outside the SSD somehow) makes no sense. Even the swap makes me dubious: is it really worthwhile to try to spare the SSD, will it not become obsolete well before it dies. Because the SSD is faster, it could actually make sense to swap on it on an optimal way? SSD supports fast reading of nonadjacent data, which seems a big plus for the swap.
Edited: It seems that this page http://ef.gy/statistics:ssd-write-endurance go in my sense. You will need more that six months to wear a SSD if you write to it at the maximum possible rate 24h/24h. If that is true, the SSD will never fail unless you do it on purpose. I have no estimate how much data we write on a hard disk on average but I think it is only a tiny fraction of that...
# mod edit: please don't rollback edits that make your thread title more relevant to the actual question you are asking. "SSD disk" means fsck all...
Last edited by jasonwryan (2013-08-20 07:04:07)

I think it is highly dependent on what you are using your machine for, but yes, I too see very little swap use with 8GB RAM. In my experience, hibernation on linux (suspend to disk) is far from perfect, and has always cased me more issues than the functionality was worth.
Recently though, I was able to set up Intel Rapid Start Technology, which is like hibernation controlled by the firmware. Typically you would use it by setting a timeout in the bios. So after being suspended for that set period of time, it would power back up partially and write the contents do disk, then "hibernate". But as of 3.11 Matthew Garrett created a userspace driver for it, so I can set it to only function in the event that my battery gets super low (at what point it decides that I'm not quite sure).
If your machien supports IRST, you should be aware that because it is firmware controlled, you cannot get away with "hibernating" on an Intel Rapid Start Technology partition that is less than the size of your RAM. It does not compress or try to opitimize the RAM contents for size at all. Also, it must be used on an SSD, so it is likely going to be taking valuable space on the faster disk. Interstingly, gehidore has the same machine as me, yet IRST works great for me, yet not at all for him.

Scratch disk and other setup questions

Hello, I am a long time Premiere user but have never been involved with the setup. I have decided to start doing personal video editing on my gaming computer and have run into some questions.
The biggest one I have is with the scratch disk setup. I've read the help doc about 10 times and googled every combination of terms I can think of but am still unsure how I should set these for my setup.
I have Premiere Pro CS5 installed on my C:, which is a 128 GB SSD
For storage I have 4 1TB drives in Raid 5, so 2.72 TB total storage.
How do I want to set up my scratch disks for best possible performance?
Question 2: This might be related to scratch disk setup, I'm not sure, but something I have always wondered. Which disk should I save my projects to in this configuration? Does it matter? Then, do I want to render my final video to that same folder or to another disk?
Question 3: I currently have a GTX 460 graphics card and am enjoying the benefits of CUDA acceleration. I have been looking at adding a second in SLI for gaming purposes, but have read that the Mercury Playback Engine is not compatible with SLI. Does this mean that it will still just work with one card and I will see no benefit in premiere, or that all CUDA acceration will cease?
Thanks guys, I really appreciate the help.

Alright, so I have the hdd's in the case and am setting up where to place everything, but each of my drives is different, so I am hoping someone can suggest best practice on which drives should hold what. I can rearrange any drive to suit any purpose you guys would suggest, but here is what I currently have set up:
C: - 128 GB SATA III SSD
D: - 150 GB 10k VelociRaptor
E: - 250 GB Caviar Black
F: - 4x 1 TB Spinpoint F4 7200 RPM in RAID 5
Here is how I am currently planning on using these drives:
C: - OS, Programs
D: - Media, Projects
E: - Previews, Exports
F: - Pagefile, Media Cache
When I am finished with a project I move the exported file onto my media server, so that is why I set the export onto the smaller drive and media cache onto the RAID.
Does this look good or would you guys suggest a different orientation for better performance?
And one other question, this time regarding RAM. I currently have 6 GB of DDR3, 3 x 2 GB. I have been reading all about how moving up to 24 GB would be very beneficial, and since it really isn't all that expensive, I am planning on doing so. My question is that, I have watched the task manager while rendering and exporting my videos and I've only ever seen RAM usage hit 1.8 GB. I wondered why it didn't get close to using all 6, but didn't worry about it too much. But now that I am hearing 24 would be helpful, I am wondering if I have something set up wrong that is stopping Premiere from using all my RAM?
Thank you guys so much for the help.

When using photos from the "Media" option in Applescripts and other apps, it takes a LONG time to load the photos from iPhoto...

It also happens when using the Media option in programs like iMovie. Has anyone found a solution for this problem?

That is long...
As a Test:
Hold down the option (or alt) key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Create Library'
Import a few pics into this new, blank library. Is the Problem repeated there?
If it is...
Create a new account (systempreferences -> accounts or Users & Groups on 10.7 and 10.8), make a new Library in that account, import some shots and see if the problem is repeated there.
Regards
TD

Best way to completely erase my SSD disk and make fresh install of MacOSX?

I want a brand new OSX installatetion. What is the best way to completely erase my SSD (to make it brand new) and reinstall MAC OSX (i can use internet WPA secure Wi-Fi to reinstall MACOSX Lion). On macbook air late 2011.

That's a good question! It's a trick question too!
Here's my thoughts on this...
It's not as obvious as one might think. You certainly don't want to do a secure erase (heck, you never need to do a secure erase unless maybe you want to sell the machine). And even a simple reformat is quationable.
It's not that these things won't work. It is just that the flash cells are not going to be reused unless there are no unused flash cells available. So you end up installing in unused flash cells which is not the same as when it was actually new.
So I don't know the answer here.
Note, I do recall the MacPerformanceGuild has some tool for reconditioning ssd's but I have to find it again and if I recall there was something that bothered me about its description.
Time for some google searches.
MPG Article on reconditing ssd's: Reconditioning a solid state drive (SSD)
I think what was bothering me about that article was the info near the end about writing over the entire ssd.
Another MPG Article: Restoring solid state drive performance with DiskTester ‘recondition’

External Drive Space, Scratch Disk and other things...

Hello,
I've been editing my first feature on FCP 5.1.4, I have an Intel Mac Pro.
All the footage (shot with a Panasonnic HVX200 using P2 Cards) is about 500GB and it's stored in two different T-Bites for safety, one of which I'm using for editing.
Since I started editing, I've made the mistake of changing the Scratc Disk a few times with the result that some of my Media Files are now stored in one T-Byte, and some in the other T-Byte.
I've tried to transfer all existing media files to both the terabytes so that, when my editor starts to really cut together the assembly I've been working on, he won't need both my external drives (like I do now) and, at the same time, I can continue to work on one of the drives.
The problem is that, although I haven't used any complicated effects or other things that would require a long rendering process- only some color correction here and there (to see how things look like) - right now, both my terabytes are practically full and I cannot transfer any media file anywhere because there is no space available.
I'm not sure if I've done something wrong but how much space do you need to edit 500GB of footage into a feature? And, most importantly, how would you organize the editing so that I can have my external drive to work on and my editor can do the same on another external drive and still have the safety of a back up? Are three or four terabytes necessary?
Have I made mistakes in the way I've been saving/storing the project?
I also have a second question:
How do I open a project made in FCP on an Intel-base MAC from a Power PC-based MAC? Is it possible?
I'll greatly apppreciate some hep with these issues.
Paula
Dual Core intel Mac Pro Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Paula Paula Paula...Man, you have edited yourself into a corner. I am not sure how to tell you to get out of it.
Are you saying that you have the original MXF files on one of these drives? or BOTH? and you are ALSO using them as Scratch Drives? What is going on here?
Here is what you NEED to do. And you might have to get another hard drive to manage this.
-Use one drive for the original CONTENTS and LASTCLIP stuff...the original camera masters. Have them in nice separate folders and on a shelf...in storage.
-Now...you want TWO sets of drives with the same media? So that you and your editor can have the same footage? OK...then you need to have a drive to copy and consolidate all the footage to. So that all of the captured media and render files are on one drive.
-Copy all of this stuff to another drive for the editor. JUST THE CAPTURED FOOTAGE. Keep the original MXF files on the shelf. The render files will differ after time, as he or you will render and those will be on that local drive only, but if you share projects then when you get a cut from the editor, all you have to do is render and you are fine.
HOW TO DO ALL OF THIS? Manage the media and copying and all that stuff...I can't help you there. I don't know how your drives are structured or what is where. This is something you'll have to figure out on your own. Thus the reason for the third drive...to be an intermediate place to work.
I'm not sure if I've done something wrong but how much space do you need to edit 500GB of footage into a feature?
What do you mean by that? How much space does 500GB take? 500GB. Like asking how long is an hour...an hour. 60 min. 500GB is 5000MB. What do you mean here?
If you want you to have footage, your editor to have footage and then there to be a back up, then you need 3 sets of drives...and another set for the MXF files.
Have I made mistakes in the way I've been saving/storing the project?
So far? Yes. Fixable? Yes. Take time? Yes.
How do I open a project made in FCP on an Intel-base MAC from a Power PC-based MAC? Is it possible?
Yes...as long as you both have EXACTLY the same version of FCP. 5.1.4...what have you.
-shane

Start up disk and "Other"

I was asked by my MacBook Pro to kindly delete some content from my startup disk. How do I do that?
What is all of the "Other" on my HD? I have 75G worth of it. How Do I Reduce that?

Freeing Up Space on The Hard Drive
1. See Lion's Storage Display.
2. You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.
3. Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.
4. Also see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.
5. See Where did my Disk Space go?.
6. See The Storage Display.
You must Empty the Trash in order to recover the space they occupied on the hard drive.
You should consider replacing the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.
Other simply refers to files that don't fit in the other defined categories and includes system files you should not delete as well as your own data files in your Home folder.

Second disk and mount library folder

Hello,
I want to buy a new ssd as 120 GB.
However, I have a lot of music or file data. So, I want to replace super drive with ssd.
I have 500gb 5400 rpm and 120 GB ssd disk. I think install mac to ssd disk.
After than, I want to move user home folder to HDD.
However, I want storage /users/username/Library on SSD disk.
Can I Library folder storage on SSD disk and other home folder on the HDD ?
so, can I mount library folder to ssd disk after, move to home folder ?
Thanks

First a suggestion - put the SSD into your current hard drive bay. That's where you'll want to keep your system files, using it as a boot drive, as well as your applications, etc,
You can then install your 500GB hard drive into the optical bay with a 'data doubler' such as those available from OWC. On it you can keep all of your users files. Pretty simple thing to do.
But I do have to stress that the SSD should be placed in the current hard drive bay.
Good luck,
Clinton

Is After Effects CC disk cache taking up double the space on my RAID 0 SSD? Should I move it?

In AE CC the available space on my RAID 0 (2 x 120GB SSD) drive drops from 100GB to around 40GB as soon as I do even a small RAM preview and even though I have set the disk cache in the preferences to 30GB. It also causes AE to prompt that I may not have enough space on the drive for the amount of cache I have set in preferences even though there appears to be 40GB left on it.
I really value working with long fast RAM previews but other than that I'm not sure if the performance is jeopardised at all here. At one point I was enjoying 60GB of disk cache.
RAID 0 is striped so it shouldn't take up double the space, am I right?
I am about to install a RAID 0 HDD (2 x 3TB) for source files as I work with video a lot and have a 4K RAW project on the go so no time like the present. So should I move the disk cache from the ridiculously fast RAID 0 SSD to the new RAID HDD drive (as suggested in Harm's guide)?

Thank you Mylenium. All this time I have been absolutely convinced that you don't need to defragment SSDs. Is this a complete misunderstanding? Even if you do though, I have Windows 8 (not 8.1) which is doing that once a week automatically (apparently even to SSDs).
Are you saying that the 30GB disk cache set up works like a contiguous file?
i7 3930k (12 virtual cores) on P9X79 Deluxe
2 x 120GB Force GT Raid 0 SSD on SATA 6gb/s is my boot drive as well as where I keep programs and the disk cache. I do a disk clean up to remove temp files a couple of times a week but that's all.
1 x 3TB Barracuda on on SATA 6gb/s for back ups and exports
3TB Lacie on USB 3 for source video and project files
2TB Lacie on USB 3 for archive projects
660ti 2GB
I'll try a manual defrag of my RAID 0 SSDs now.

How do I insert one new SSD disk?

I want to buy one additional SSD disk and insert to my MacBook Pro, how should I do?

If you are looking to add an additional ssd, you need to remove the optical drive, and in its place, put in a data doubler as seen here: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/drive_bracket/datadoubler/. You can also, watch an instructional video on how to do this here by selecting the model mac you have and clicking on the hyperlink that is below your model: http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/.

SSD Raid and other comments

I spent the time to test a few situations for myself because there is no real life data that I can find on the internet which pertains to a real Mac user environment. These are only my finding and observations so I can finally stop ripping into my 2008 Mac Pro and changing things around constantly. Its not very scientific but to me I don't mind since the Mac user environment is judged upon feel as a large consideration. Also I'm not a high end power user to work with expensive software solutions. Just an average Mac user since '86, interested in speed and feel for speed.
First: I wanted to utilize my 6 sata ports for hard drives because one, I test and need the extra hard drives and two, I was thinking of Raid 0 with SSD. So I researched and found nothing about using a sata optical connected to the ide controller in top compartment of the Mac Pro. So I decided to try anyway and purchased a Manhattan Sata 300 to ide converter. The only reason I bought this item is their web site said Windows, Mac and Linux compatible. I set J3 to cable select and connected the provided y-type power connector to the tiny controller card and the optical. I tried an LG CH08LS10 BD reader/DVD burner and a Samsung SH-B083. Without going into lots of detail everything I threw at the opticals worked. ASP shows ata connected device and of course nothing under sata.
Second: I have read all there is to read about raid 0 and SSD for the boot drive.I have also tried every combination of SSD raid 0 and concluded only based upon observation and feel concerning speed that it made no sense to raid 0 SSD and lose a good sata port. Yes it does have an improvement on write speed but I don't store large files to write. I use a conventional scratch disk 7200 rpm or a 300 gig velociraptor. I'm believe one should match up the SSD to all other devices it will eventually interact. So I don't have enough room to raid conventional hard drives nor do I want to purchase a third party pci card. For those of you suggesting otherwise, I'm spending my time towards myself and the normal casual user. Here's some points to consider:
1) I wanted to stop watch test only those real events I was familiar, finding that kind of data on the internet is basically nonexistent.
2) finding optimal raid block size is highly important, yet difficult to find. Probably because to test all the sizes would be a huge PITA. So my test is simple. Make the raid0, choose the block size, install the OS and test. Open DMG files off a second hard drive I used Seagate 7200 rpm and feel the time it takes to open the dmg and mount on the desktop. With a single SSD its quite fast, usually 1 second. In raid zero if the block size is chosen incorrectly then the time will become quite long, being obviously slower. I'm not the expert so I wouldn't recommend the correct size but I think 16k is good. 32K becomes slow.
3) Here are some stop watch times:
warm restart: single SSD 39.1 secs raid 0 47.6 sec (not worth the loss of one sata port)
install itunes 10.1.2 since this dmg does take a longish time: single SSD 1:47.0 min raid 0 1:27.6 (hardly worth the loss of one sata port)
use itunes to add to a very large music library including artwork: single SSD 1:44.1 min raid 0 1:44.1 min
using itunes to change equalizer to rock for the entire library: single SSD 1:17.9 min raid 0 1:16.8
How to make itunes numbers faster , instead of placing the music folder on a conventional hard drive, I used a 300 gig Velociraptor ; place the music file on the SSD then itunes will really fly faster BUT what's the sense for a one time shot. Why use up the SSD space for a couple extra seconds.
Lastly, I think raid 0 for conventional hard drives would be beneficial but once user gets into SSD the entire story changes. So I'm providing my experiences as a community service. I'm not looking for answer. I feel satisfied that I'm not going to raid my boot drive, a single SSD is fast enough to boot and launch applications. I'll store my data files on a scratch drive, a fast 7200 rpm hard drive wich matches up to my SSD drive. My SSD drives are X25M intel and they match well with fast hard drives. I don't need to raid hard drives because they'll write faster than the intel can do. 105 M/sec is good enough for me, the normal casual user.
My boot drive is 19 gigs used. I have the normal amount of Applications installed . My music, downloads and movies are on a 7200 rpm scratch drive. Attaching my firewire externals matches up with my internals for speed within reason. Someone write something positive so I can close this post out.

Another thought then I'm done with this thread.
I posted a topic about the Radeon 5770 or 5870 working in the 2008 Mac Pro. I read all the stuff on the internet that it is doable. Although it is there was not ANY comments about what if a person clean installs with that card installed prior to. I did that test and was not totally satisfied that its bullet proof.
I think that too many comments about things that supposedly work but will be unsupported needs to have more justification.
Except if you think about it, each time I post some simplistic real world test and make comments to how I'm satisfied with performance there are only a small less than handful of people who bother to return a reply. A conclusion then follows that what ever one digests out there on the internet needs to be looked at in depth with some thought. Not just acceptance that the data is all inclusive. I'd never post any data where I thought it was 100% correct when in fact there is variability.
A simple example would be do some research and try to find out exactly what programs use how many cores. There's some data but not enough to cover the large quantity of programs which exist for the Mac using either Snow Leopard or Leopard.
One of my pet peeves is to do research and go to some forum, out of this one and read all the responses to some persons query. Its ridiculous the amount of band width wasted with replies that don't come close to answering the initial question.

Adding a RAID card to help speed up export (and other drive question) in Premiere Pro CC

First of all, I have read Tweakers Page exporting section because that is where my primary concern is. First my questions, then background and my current and proposed configurations:
Question 1: Will adding a hardware RAID controller, such as an LSI MegaRAID remove enough burden from the CPU managing parity on my software RAID 5 that the CPU will jump for joy and export faster?
Question 2: If true to above, then compare thoughts on adding more smaller SSDs for either a one volume RAID 0 or smaller two volume RAID 0 to complement existing HDD RAID 5. That is, I'm thinking of buying four Samsung 850 Pro 128 GB SSDs to put in a four disk volume to handle everything (media/projects, media cache, previews, exports), or split it up into two volumes of two disks each and split the duties, or keep the four disk volume idea and put the previews & exports on my HDD RAID 5 array.
The 850's are rated at SEQ read/write: 550/470 MB/s thus I could get around 2000/1500 MB/s read write in a four disk RAID 0 or 1/2 that if I split into two volumes to minimize volumes from reading/writing at the same time, if that really matters with these SSDs?
The Tweaker's page made a few comments. One is splitting duties among different disks, rather than a large efficient RAID may actually slow things down. Since the SSDs are much faster than a single HDD, I'm thinking that is no longer accurate, thus I'm leaning toward the Four disk configuration putting OS & Programs on C drive, Media & Projects on D (HDD RAID 5), Pagefile & Media Cache on SSD (2-disk RAID 0) and Previews &Exports on 2nd SSD RAID 0 (or combine the two RAID 0's and their duties).
Just trying to get a perspective here, since I haven't purchased anything yet. Any experience/stories, I would appreciate.
My current drive configuration:
My D drive is software RAID 5 consisting of four 1 TB Western Digital RE4 (RED) 7200 RPM HDDs with a CrystalDiskMark SEQ Read/Write of 339/252 MB/s.
The C drive is SSD 500 GB (Samsung 840 (not Pro) and does 531/330 MB/s. My OS, Program Files and Page File are on C, and data/media files/project, etc all are on the RAID drive.
Problem:
Current setup allows for smooth editing, only the exporting seems slow, often taking between two and two and a half times the video length to export. Thus a 10 minute video takes 20-30 minutes to export. 15 minute video can take 30-40 minutes to export. The first 10% of the two-pass export takes under a minute (seems fast), but it gets slower where the final 10 or 20% can hang for many minutes like my system is running out of steam. So where is the waste?
I have enabled hardware acceleration (did the GPU hack since my GPU isn't listed) and it may spike at 25% usage a few times and eat up 600 MB of VRAM (I have 2 GB of VRAM), otherwise it is idle the whole export. The CPU may spike at 50% but it doesn't seem overly busy either.
Our timeline is simple with two video streams and two audio streams (a little music and mostly voice) with simple transitions (jump cuts or cross dissolves). We sometimes fast color correct, so that might use the GPU? Also, since we film in 1080 60P and export 1080 29.97 frames/sec, I think that is scaling and uses the GPU. I know without the GPU, it does take a lot longer. I have ruled out buying a faster GPU since it doesn't appear to be breaking a sweat. I just need to know if my system is bottlenecked at the hard drive level because I'm using software RAID and my disks are slow and will hardware RAID significantly reduce the CPU load so it can export faster.
Our files are not huge in nature. Most our clips are several MBs each. Total project files are between 5 GBs and 10 GBs for each video with Windows Media File export being 500 MB to 1.2 GB on average. We shoot using Panasonic camcorders so the original files are AVCHD, I believe (.MTS files?).
Considerations:
1. I'm thinking of buying (and future proofing) an LSI Logic MegaRAID 9361-8i that is 12Gb/s SAS and SATA (because some current SSDs can exceed the 6Gb/s standard).
2. I'm not replacing my current RAID 5 HDDs because not in my budget to upgrade to 6 or more large SSDs. These drives are more important to me for temporary storage because I remove the files once backed up. I don't mind a few inexpensive smaller SSDs if they can make a significant difference for editing and exporting.
I can only guess my HDD RAID is slow but the CPU is burdened with parity. I would imagine running RAID 10 would not help much.
My setup:
my setup:
CPU - i7-3930K CPU @4.5 GHz
RAM - G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3 2133 @2000
Motherboard - ASUS P9X79 WS LGA 2011
GPU - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 OC 2GB (performed the compatibility list hack to enable hardware acceleration).
C drive - 500 GB Samsung 840 SSD (Windows 7 Pro 64 bit and programs).
D drive - four 1 TB WD RE4 Enterprise HDDs 7200 RPMs in software RAID 5
Case - Cooler Master HAF X
CPU Fan - Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO with 120 mm fan
Power Supply - Corsair Pro Series AX 850 Watt 80 Plus Gold
Optical Drive - Pioneer BDR - 208DBK
thanks in advance,
Eric

........software RAID 5 off the motherboard ??????......NOT a good idea, from what I have read here on this forum from experts like Harm Millard and others. They have mentioned a LARGE overhead on the CPU doing this....causing sub-par performance. RAID 0 off the motherboard will NOT do this, however.....RAID 0 would provide optimum speed, but, with the risk of total data loss if ANY drive fails. You may wish to reconfigure your RAID to be RAID 0...BUT...you would need to DILIGENTLY back up its entire volume onto perhaps a quality 4TB drive very frequently.
A lot depends on the nature of your current and FUTURE codecs you plan to edit. You may not want to sink a lot of money into an older setup that may have trouble with more demanding future codecs. For now, in the 1080p realm, your rig should be OK....the read/write performance on your CURRENT RAID 5 setup is not great, and a definite drag on the performance. The rest of your components appear to be fine.....the Samsung SSD, though not ideal, is OK.....it's write speed is WAY lower than the Pro model,but, the drive is used mainly for reading operations. Since you have Windows 7 Pro, and NOT Windows 8.......you CAN put the entire windows page file onto the RAID 0 you might create.....this will take that frequent read/write load OFF the SSD. Read the "tweakers Page" to see how to best TUNE your machine. To use your current setup most efficiently, without investing much money, you would :a. create the RAID 0 off the motherboard, ( putting all media and project files on it ) b. install a quality 7200rpm 4TB HDD to serve as a BACKUP of the RAID array. Then, install a Crucial M550 256GB or larger SSD, ( close in performance to Samsung 850 Pro...much cheaper), to put all previews, cache , and media cache files on....AND to use as " global performance cache" for After Effects...if you use that program. Exporting can be done to ANOTHER Crucial M550 for best speed...or, just to the either the FIRST Crucial or, the 4TB drive. Your current GPU will accelerate exports on any video containing scaling and any GPU accelerated effects. Your CPU is STILL important in SERVING the data to and from the GPU AND for decoding and encoding non-GPU handled video....your high CPU clock speed helps performance there ! You may want to check out possibly overclocking your video card, using MSI Afterburner.or, similar free program. Increasing the "memory clock speed" can RAISE performance and cut export times on GPU effects loaded timelines,or, scaling operations. On my laptop, I export 25% faster doing this. With my NEW i7 4700 HQ laptop, I export in the range of your CURRENT machine....about 2 to 3 times the length of the original video. PROPERLY SET UP...your desktop machine should BLOW THIS AWAY !!
Visit the PPBM7 website and test your current setup to possibly identify current bottlenecks,or, performance issues. THEN, RE-TEST it again, after making improvements to your machine to see how it does. Be aware that new codecs are coming (H.265 and HEVC,etc.) which may demand more computer horsepower to edit, as they are even MORE compressed and engineered for "streaming" high quality at a lower bandwidth on the internet. The new Haswell E...with its quad-channel memory, 8 core option, large number of PCI gen. 3 lanes, goes farther in being prepared for 4K and more. Testing by Eric Bowen has shown the newer PPro versions provide MUCH better processing of 4K than older versions.

My Windows 7 Professional desktop system hard disk got corrupted and I took the opportunity to install an SSD for a new system disk and reinstall Windows. The system is up and running on the SSD, with my old system disk now used for storage as it is stil

My Windows 7 Professional desktop system hard disk got corrupted and I took the opportunity to install an SSD for a new system disk and reinstall Windows. The system is up and running on the SSD, with my old system disk now used for storage as it is still readable. The only Adobe product I have reinstalled so far is Reader XI but I would like to reinstall Elements 8 and Acrobat 9 without taking up more licences as both are also installed on my laptop. Can you point me to the best way to do this? - Thanks

If you have the two allotted activations already and one was lost on the hard drive that failed then you need to contact Adobe Support thru chat and ask them to reset your activations.
For the link below click the Still Need Help? option in the blue area at the bottom and choose the chat option...
Serial number and activation chat support (non-CC)
http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/service1.html ( http://adobe.ly/1aYjbSC )

Why no RAID options for new disks?

Hi support group,
"My name is Shaun, and I am a mac-aholic"
I inserted 4 new 3TB disks into the bays of my Mac Pro (2012), and there is no RAID option for them.
How I got here:
Inserted the WD Red drives, and they were not initiated.
I "erased" the drives, gave them names, and they appear in Disk Utility in grey drives.
Went to set up the RAID, and move the drives into the RAID, but got an error that they could not be used.
It appears to me that disk utility is not allowing me to fully use those drives. I Have created RAID drives before with no issue in RAID1 with 3TB drives before on this machine. Am perplexed, I thought this to be the easy and simple part of my upgrade odyssey! Did I screw up the initialization? On all FOUR drives?
Now, if I click on the drives, the RAID option does not present itself.
FWIW, I am using OS X 10.9.5, on Mac Pro 5,1. I boot from PCIe card. My end goal is to create a 4-disk RAID 10 using the four SATA connections on the MP.

It was really pretty simple based on your feedback, I powered down, removed the drives from the SATA backplane, moved each drive separately to the USB enclosure, then re-"erased" in OSX-Etended. I ejected each drive when finished, and moved to the next one until all four were re-"erased". Then I restarted the Mac with all four in the SATA connections, and all four were visible and had the RAID option tab. I created the three RAID schemes (two stripe and one mirror), and dragged the drives into the RAID option. Then I hit "create" or some other command to finish the RAID.
Note that I did get an error on the RAID creation. From memory, this was "cannot create RAID without an unmounted disk" or something like that. I cleared the error, and then opened back up Disk Utility. All the RAIDs were listed, and were operational with the green "On" signal. I could read/write/transfer from the RAID. Once I transfer the data to this RAID, I will work on a way to test it, but if any risk to the data, I might just leave well enough alone.
For now, it seems I have a fully functional RAID 1+0 using the four HDD on the SATA connections in my Mac Pro 5,1.

RAID options, SSD disks and others....

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for