Hey All

I was curious to hear from other Mac Pro users how they've outfitted their tower with hard drives. With Leopard now installed and Time Machine available, I'm thinking it may be time to add another drive.

Current drive setup:

1) 250GB stock internal drive - system, apps, documents (including photo projects).

2) 500GB Western Digitial internal drive - my Time Machine backup drive. Backs up everything on my 250GB stock drive.

3) 500GB external Western Digital My Book that I share with my wife, and keep camera originals on for current projects, so I always have 3 copies of in-production project files.

My 250GB stock drive is near full, and I really shouldn't be keeping my projects on it anyway. Applications feel like they are running sluggish on the near full drive. So, here was the plan:

1) Run only OS System and Apps on the 250GB stock drive.

2) Move all projects to the 500GB internal drive.

3) Add another internal drive, 750GB, for Time Machine backup.

4) Continue to use the external 500GB to keep copies of in-production project files.

Sound like a decent plan? Do 750GB internal drives seem like a good buy at this time? They seem to float around $150. 1TB drives still seem a bit pricey. I could get another 500GB, but I'd like to maximize the slots.

I also need to get in the habit of laying off older jobs from the hard drive to DVD. Have external hard drives gotten cheap to the point where some of you are just storing jobs on portable hard drives and filing away the drive in a closet, rather than using stacks of DVDs? DVDs are still cheaper per GB, but the time and space to burn 500GB worth of files can be immense.

We just upgraded to a Mac Pro and have the following setup:

Drives:
1. System Drive
2. Editing Drive (we do all our work on this drive.
3&4. Setup as a RAID 1 using Disk Utility (2x500gig drives)

This setup works great for us. We have externals for all backup processes. And another 6TB of storage in a networked SAN and rotating off-site backups.

Thanks, JT!

I have 4 drives in my Mac Pro.

1. 250gb 3gb/s drive for OSX and applications

2. 400gb 3gb/s drive for Windows vista and all windows files and applications. (for gaming mostly, but some PC only software too)

3. 1tb 3gb/s drive in a RAID 1 array with drive 4, used for all photo work.

4. same as #3.


I got the 1tb drives from newegg for about $250.. with drives that cheap I figured I'd raid them, not as my backups since I use all externals for backing up. I just want to make sure that any edits we're in the middle of will never be an issue.

Anyone else concerned about reliability issues with 1TB drives?

Has the same amount of moving parts as a 500gb drive so I'd say I'm not worried.. All drives fail, we just hope "when" is longer than we need it for.

I've stuck mine in a raid setup too.. so I'm good to go.

Here's our current Mac Pro setup:

4 x 500 GB Seagate 7200.10 HDDs (upgraded from 1 x 250 GB HDD)
Sonnet Tempo E4P SATA Host Card connected to External MacGurus Burly Box with Port Multiplication - 8 x 500 GB Seagate 7200.9 SATA HDDs.

If I were in your position today I'd go for the 750 GB drives since they've hit the point where storage/$ makes sense even versus the 500 GB ones.

No RAID here, but that's by choice. We have a duplication scheme that seems to be working for us.

The "eggs in one basket" argument is hardly apropos anymore, IMO. Shooting RAW and the advances in hard drive technology makes > 500 GB drives a necessity.

We've got 1 250 for the OS and everything non photo related (i.e. iTunes, etc)

Then 3 500 gig drives in a RAID 1 formation for speed. We backup everything to a smaller drive.

I'm actually thinking of backing everything up to another redundant RAID system which would be external.

Internal 1 - 160G - Sys and apps only!
Internal 2 - 80G - Music and Photoshop working disc

External 1/4 - Originals - Mirrored 500G CF cards go right to here
External 2/5 - Selects - Mirrored 500G - Selects and edits go here
External 3/6 - Documents - Mirrored 250G - album design, contracts, and all other stuff goes here

So what that 2.75 Terabytes?

I can't wait for a bigger sensor camera! One of these days I'm gonna invest in a good rack server system.

I grabbed a 1 TB disk BECAUSE of Time Machine. What a relief! It's so simple and it much much much much easier than a manual backup. Just get the 1TB drive because it will be able to run backups on EVERYTHING and you won't have to fret. I even bought it at the Apple Store and it wasn't too bad.

I have two 500GB Lacie Quadra D2's via Firewire 800. I am migrating from old hard drives now and leaving those in sealed anti-static bags in storage...probably send them to my folks in case of fire or whatever.

I am using an Imac with mybook externals because I don't have enough room for all the storage on my computer. Anyone have any good suggestions for setting up a good working system with this? I work and edit off of one external and have documents on another. Sorry I know this is on a different system, but I thought You might have some good answers

Callie here's what I would do in your scenario.

I would work off the internal HD because I'm an impatient person, the slowness from externals would do my head in.

I would get 2 identical external drives and back up your RAW files (as in unedited if you shoot Jpeg) to both drives. To do that I would copy to one drive, unplug that, then copy the same way to the 2nd. DO NOT copy from one external to the other. This is like a RAID setup in that you have a redundant backup but without the chance of a copying error being duplicated.

Do your edits on your internal drive.. then Copy the edited files to the externals just like I mention above. The end result is that you have a secure redundant backup of both the unedited files... and then the same for the edited ones. You may even choose to delete the unedited ones but I just burn them to DVD and keep the edited ones archived on the drives.

Paul,
Thanks for the info that helps. I like the idea of the separate drives to copy the info separatly. The only problem is I can't work off of my internal HD because I don't have enough memory. I don't have a problem with it being slow I just wanted a better system, because my mybooks are not mounting. Any suggestions on a better external HD?

Give the MacGurus a call (on the phone). Tell them what you're looking to do and they'll offer a very reasonably priced and reliable option.

Just FYI: I am in no way affiliated with MacGurus.

I assume you mean by out of memory is that your internal drive is out of space??? If so.. move some less important stuff to an external to give you some room to work with. If it were a memory problem you'd have the same issue with internal or external as Ram doesn't change that way.

Mybooks are usually pretty reliable.. Mine have been great so far so my suggestion for you would be to try a different cable, if your using USB and have a mybook that isn't the essential edition it should have a firewire port.. so you can try that. Also if you have more than one, try the power cable from the other one. If this doesn't work let me know and I can suggest some tricks to get it mounted to get your data off it.

Hey everyone thanks for the suggestions.

Paul, I tried a different cable and that worked. Does that happen every so often? Just so I can be prepared. Thanks for all the help! I also bought 2 500 drives and plan on doing the double back up!

The sad part is that cables are made of wire.. you bend them enough times they are gonna break. I'm happy to hear things worked out, you're quite welcome!