TimeMachine or RAID with internal iMac HDD?

I am thinking of getting an external SSD for use as my boot disk and then connecting it via Thunderbolt. Presently I have a 72rpm HDD and it's showing it's age, but it's 1TB and so will the external SSD, the move is purely for speed, on top of this I have an external 1TB HDD which I interface via tryst ol' USB2 and use that for TimeMachine back-up.
My question is whether to cut the chord with the external USB 2 HDD and use the internal HDD as a TimeMachine instead when running from SSD?
Either than or keep the external HDD as a TimeMachine back-up and use a RAID configuration so that if anything were to happen I could pickup from where I left off, but not sure about the performance hit, or if I could even do that (i.e. RAID from external Thunderbolt SSD to internal iMac HDD)?
There is another option and that would be that the Thunderbolt connected enclosure will have two bays and so I could fit in an affordable HDD for one of these suggestions. The benefit being that I would be able to forfeit one of the mains plugs (1TB is never going to be Bus driven!) and use it for the Thunderbolt enclosure.
I suppose my main concerns would be how to et up RAID with the different storage systems and if it would work, as well as the performance hit, I'm not sure what suffers when connecting SSD to HDD and having a real time backup system, if it's even worth it? I am making the SSD move for speed after all.

I forgot to mention that I may also consider encrypting my backup or RAID drive, any thoughts on that too?

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Peter-thanks for the reply
I did validate that FCE uses the internal speakers when I directly imported some video clips from my camera-so I seem to be past that problem.
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Again-Thanks

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Community Search: "iMac SSD"
That article is misleading to an extent and applied to the workstations with 4 internal drives and easy to access - and misleading as to why other drives had to be removed etc.
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Hi..
Try this thread > https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3285582

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Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
Any external optical drive will work with your Mac. If you want an Apple USB SuperDrive, see > http://www.tuaw.com/2012/04/02/use-the-macbook-air-superdrive-with-any-almost-ma c/
The best option is to take the Mac to an Apple Store and get the Mac's SuperDrive repaired

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a few months ago I bought an imac 27 inch late 2013 .. §16GB - and flash memory) - 3,3 Ghz Intel Core 15
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You are still under warranty and/or have AppleCare. Call them. Let them deal w/it.

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Hello there,
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Once upon a time, in a land far far away, ATTO and LSI, and Adaptec mainly owned the storage market for Mac controllers, and even then in those happy times we heard there was Voodoo in the land, and a curse on what were the Rules of SCSI Voodoo, and one had to be careful that a drive really was certified and tested, and one had to insure which firmware version one was talking about, not just any which firmware - and controllers also had to be updated as well.
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If one did all of the above, and was careful, you were rewarded with a working storage controller and array and the best possible performance at the time.
And sometimes you could venture off the reservation... a little, and some drivers could patch and work around bugs in firmware or other problems - just as bugs in cpu, boot firmware, and microcode can be patched by the OS kernel. And people would pay for retail drivers, or they would have to rely on the vendor's bundled driver (that may only work on their own drives and no others).
Hard Disk Toolkit, Silverlining and others made name for themselves, amoung others that now have faded into oblivion for most.
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Help Rehabing a old iMac with a bad HDD

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David

HT2801 Apple Store said that the USB SuperDrive would work with my iMac that already has an internal optical drive to be used as a secondary drive, but I can't get it to work when I plug it in the usb port.

Apple store said the USB SuperDrive would work as a secondary drive with my iMac.
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Which USB Superdrive are you referring to? If this is the one:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD564ZM/A/apple-usb-superdrive
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No audio recording onn my imac with internal mike?

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Hi,
I take it you mean System Preferences > Sound > Input has the Mic Selected and the volume set high enough to make the Blue Bar move to about half way.
In the App you use to record does it have a place to Select the Input choice ?
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8:07 PM Tuesday; June 21, 2011
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Just setup a fw800 raid device. to imac 27inch test scores

okay I don't know the rules so if i am wrong let me know I purchased a mercury elite-al pro Qx2 from owc. I put in 4 1tb samsung f23 hdds. partitioned a 4tb striped raid loaded iMac osx onto it via firewire800 loaded xbench and ran an xbench test. I get 228 overall with the 4tb striped raid vs 174 to 187 with internal hdd. here are all my test results
http://db.xbench.com/search.xhtml?text=zzzzz5
so it seems like the owc unit smokes with 4 samsung f3 drives and a fw800 connection.. the random 4k readings are great. I am going to run some geekbench tests. this is a 3.06ghz with 16gb ram and the grapic upgrade . if I can't post results this way please let me know how.

in an effort to answer, internal hdd vs external fw800 I put a western digital 2003fyys 2tb hdd in an external hdd case from sans digital I ran xbench on it, it is a clone of the internal seagate oem 1tb 7200.12 drive. http://db.xbench.com/search.xhtml?text=zzzzz5 these are all my imac's tests on xbench today's tests on march 5 show that the external is about 10 percent faster then the stock internal. this means you can boost your imac's preformance with a high quality external hdd like the wd 2003fyys. the wd2001fass is easier to find it is know as the scopio black in both cases these are 2tb drives. as for using some other external fw800 cases I would really think ones that allow drive removal are easy to test for best preformance. external hdd that come sealed with an included drive may not be as fast. I like the idea of buying a 100 to 125 dollar empty fw800 case and then finding a quick hdd to put in. as we all know opening the new imac to change hdds is not easy so runnung an external may add life to the machine and a boost in speed.

Using external hard drive with both iMac and PC

I own an old Dell PC and an iBook, and will soon replace the Dell with an iMac.
I recently bought a 250GB Western Digital external hard drive to back up my data. I would like to use this hard drive to back up all of the files that are on the PC (which I will soon be getting rid of) and also use it for backing up the files on the iBook and, when it arrives, the iMac. In other words, neatly back up all my info onto the back-up drive.
My question is this: can I do this? If not, what is the best way to consolidate all of the data from all of these computers into one place? Will the fact that some data comes from a PC and some from a Mac be a problem? Can you move back-up drives fromone computer to another? The photos on my PC are saved in Picasa, whereas the photos on the iBook are in iTunes. My iPod music files are all on the PC in iTunes.
Any advice about backing all this stuff up in a user friendly way would be greatly appreciated.
By the way, I have heard that there are ways to reformat external drives, to partition them, and to "raid" them. Can someone explain what this all means?
Thanks.
iBook G4

Hello,
Your best option would be to store the files from your PC on the drive with the drive in the FAT32 format. Then, copy the files to your Mac's Internal hard drive.
Now, once the files are stored safely on your Mac's internal hard drive, you can safely reformat the external drive as a Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) drive. That will be the best format to use for long-term purposes with your Mac.
Many OS X file types (such as many PKG files) cannot be stored / written to a FAT32 volume. So, a FAT32 drive would not be suitable for backing-up an entire OS X hard drive (or even many of the system updates that you might download).
So, that's how I'd do it. Use the drive as a FAT32 just long enough to get the files moved to your Mac.
Once the drive is re-formatted in the Native Mac format, then you could copy the files back to it, and any other Mac files that you wanted to back-up to it for safe-keeping.
Personally, I would re-partition it in at least two pieces on the Mac. One to hold data / personal files for safe-keeping, and a second bootable partition for a full system / OS X backup.
You can read a bit more about this in some of my previous discussions here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2536703&#2536703
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2597825&#2597825
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2632566&#2632566
Read through each of those three discussions and you'll see how they all come together and provide you with a good solution for backing-up your hard drive.
I hope you don't mind my linking you to those other discussions, but it just seemed more practical than re-typing what I had already said all over again
Also, if you are getting one of the new Intel iMac systems, and you want to be able to create a bootable backup as described in those posts, be sure to format your external hard drive using the new GUID format. That will provide you with the best solution.
I hope this helps.
Let us know if you have other questions.
P.S., if you'd like, go ahead and click the "Helpful" or "Solved" buttons on any of the posts / replies above if you feel they were helpful or adequately answered your question.

Hi , I suhail khan from india and i am user of iMac system 10,1.These days i am facing the sound enabling issue with my iMac system I am not able to hear sound in my iMac system.So kindly suggest me how to enable sound in my iMac . Please no the needful.

Hi , I suhail khan from india and i am user of iMac system 10,1.These days i am facing the sound enabling issue with my iMac system I am not able to hear sound in my iMac system.So kindly suggest me how to enable sound in my iMac . Please no the needful.

Take each of the following steps that you haven't already tried.
1. If you've recently plugged anything into the audio-out (headphone) port, plug and unplug it a couple of times.
2. From the menu bar, select
 ▹ System Preferences ▹ Sound ▹ Output
Check the settings. The internal speakers should be selected as the output device, the Mute box should not be checked, and the volume slider should be at least halfway to the right.
3. Look inside the headphone port. If a red light is coming from the port, the internal switch is stuck in the position for digital output. You may be able to free it by inserting and removing a headphone mini-stereo jack of the proper size.Inserting any kind of tool in the port may cause damage that won't be covered by your warranty.
4. Boot in safe mode by holding down the shift key at the startup chime. It will take much longer than usual. You don't have to log in; just reboot as usual (without holding any keys) when the login screen appears. (Note: If FileVault is enabled under OS X 10.7 or later, or if a firmware password is set, or if the boot volume is a software RAID, you can’t boot in safe mode.)
5. Reset the NVRAM.
6. Reset the SMC.
7. Reinstall OS X after backing up all data as a precaution. You won't need your backup unless something goes wrong.
8. Make a "Genius" appointment at an Apple Store.
Back up all data on the internal drive(s) before you hand over your computer to anyone. If privacy is a concern, erase the data partition(s) with the option to write zeros* (do this only if you have at least two complete, independent backups, and you know how to restore to bare metal from any of them.) Don’t erase the recovery partition, if present.
*An SSD doesn't need to be zeroed.

RAID with Disk Utility question

I've setup a RAID array in disk utility for an external SATA NAS that I have. The Silicon Image Si3132 drivers are not working for Snow Leopard (the SATARAID 5 drivers) so I've installed the base non-raid drivers for 10.6.
I'm using Disk Utility to setup the RAID for now until I get updated drivers from SI. Here's my question:
Let's just say that my Mac Pro one day decides to die and I have to rebuild a new OS on the machine. I will then have this external drive where I've configured a software RAID with Mac OS X. Will I be able to rebuild this RAID and recover the data, or will I lose all of the data if the Mac needs to be rebuilt?
The external enclosure has its own controller, but these silicon image drivers do not seem to want to work as they are kernel panicking.
Will I be able to recover the RAID config with disk utility if I rebuild the machine? My thinking is NO

You have four internal hard drives; ability to boot from FW or USB, and I would include TimeMachine and clone (Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper). Some WHS NAS servers also support TimeMachine and SuperDuper, but I would have local backups. Two minimum.
I would not rely on SI or RAID.
And all you need to boot from, and I'd have at least two, is a basic 30GB partition for Mac OS: a working copy of your system as is, a copy of last version installed also, AND, one "emergency" boot partition for disk maintenance and repairs.
Then use NAS as second line of backup for your data, disk images, etc.

TimeMachine or RAID with internal iMac HDD?

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