I've currently got 1 250 gig hard drive in my MacPro. The Mac Pro can take up to 4 hard drives and I'd like to set the other 3 up to be a RAID for basically all of my images. So I would keep all my system files and applications, etc on my current 250 drive (which is more than enough) and then work off of a RAID on the other 3. I would like the RAID system to be redundant, so that it acts as a backup and I'm not screwed if one of the drives goes bad, but I also want if I can, to set up the system for the most optimized speed efficiency. Any suggestions anyone on the best idea for me?

I've heard of RAID systems not being very fast, but would that not apply to this one since it's all internal drives and not an external network?

Raid 1, is a good first line of defense. It is a mirroring solution. This is basically identical drives set up so that each time you write to the first drive, it is automatically written to the second drive as well.

Raid can get pretty complex and depending on what it is used for can be fast. The Raid 1 solution will be fine. If you use Raid 0 which stripes the data across multiple disks (ie, if you use 3 disks in your array) you will need additional backup.

I know RAID one is probably the simplest solution, but I've heard it's pretty slow. Also, it doesn't give me THAT much storage since it's a straight mirror. Are there any RAID setups that would use 3 disks in such a way that it would be a backup system as well as give me a good amount of storage and be relatively fast? I know that's a lot to ask!

Well you could always do Raid 0 with the 3 empty disk slots inside your MacPro and then set up a NAS via your network for backup. That can get pricey very quickly. I know somebody that recently had a huge external Raid 0 setup, using Mac OS X to manage the RAID and the master file became corrupt. He lost a ton of images, thankfully he had most all backed up off site. He did lose a shoot that he was working on though. He was under the impression that it was a big backup solution.

That is my .02

David,

Do you know would RAID 5 be a good solution? I've heard it offers the parity as well as the stripping between the drives so it seems like it's somewhat of the best of all worlds.

Thanks for your input!

Problem with RAID is that if the data for some reason copies incorrectly, it is copied incorrectly to all. If you used the discs as just separate discs and had a script back them up nightly to the different discs, that would reduce the chances of RAID copying it incorrectly. Tradeoff's to each though. Since you are wanting to use all 3 discs, I'd say use RAID 5. (Of course, you could have 2 discs fail at the same time and be SOL).

And if you wanted to speed things up even more, you could buy some additional HD controllers, and that way each HD would be on a separate controller, and that would get a little extra speed (maybe the Mac Pro already has each on separate controllers, I don't know though).

RAID 5 probably would be a good solution. If you have 3 250GB disks you will have 500GB of usable space. If one of the disks fail you are still OK. For the amount of reading/writing you will be doing, you will not experience that much of a loss in speed. I think Raid 5 is probably the most cost effective solution. We used it a lot back in my Database Admin days

I have to agree with Chris on each of these points.

Don't get caught up in the RAID hype. To do it right/fault-tolerant you basically need two RAIDs -- a second to back up the first one -- and you're trusting a complex configuration of software actively managing a cluster of hard drives to do something that should be very simple.

Throw 4 500GB HDDs (more cost effective than the 750GBs) in the MacPro. Get a PCIe SATA controller card and build an external SATA box.

Check out an earlier storage-related thread for configuration ideas:

http://www.opensourcephoto.net/forum/index...72&hl=Damon

Good luck!

Maybe I should have prefaced this that all the RAW files we shoot (as well as all the converted final JPEGs at the end) get stored on external 250 gig hard drives. Once I fill one up I go buy another. I want this RAID system so that I can have access to all my files from this year on one machine without having to go through and pull out old hard drives. Right now I've got 8 external hard drives sitting on my desk and most of that is from just last year. Having the 250 gig external backups are great if something does happen to my Mac Pro, but I don't want to have to work off those drives.

Can someone explain the whole controller card deal to me? I'm just not very familiar with how that works and if I need one for doing a RAID 5 in my Mac Pro.

If that's the case then you should do Raid 0 (striping) for speedier access, if you aren't using the RAID for backup.

Depending on the Mac you have, your HD card may or may not support RAID on the controller card. That's ok, because the OS can handle it. There's tradeoff's (of course) between having the controller card or the OS handle the RAID.

Another deal with the cards is that, say, you are using one controller card to connect all 4 hard drives. There is a limited throughput on the amount of data the card can handle at one time, and odds are, 4 drives at once would cause delay. If each HD had it's own card (or 1 card per 2 drives) then that max throughput probably wouldn't be reached, and thus no bottleneck. Of course, some cards can handle 4, so it all depends on the specific hardware you get / have already.

Yeah, I've thought about just doing RAID 0, but I think I still just want to setup the RAID so that there is SOME redundancy.

Someone on another forum was suggesting doing a RAID 10 setup. Any thoughts on these?

Well, to do RAID 10 I believe you'd have to use at least 4 drives, and you stated that you only wanted to use 3.

Other than that, might be a solution. Not too sure though!

I'm building a new workstation and it will have a 10k RPM system drive, + 2 ~200GB 10k drives in RAID0 which I'll use as a scratch/workspace drive. Very fast disk access.

Short term (<12mo) storage is via GigE network on a separate system (i.e. my fileserver - also handles several other server-related tasks and maintains backups of all of my systems).

Projects (e.g. weddings) are backed up individually to DVD at defined milestones so that I always have at LEAST two copies of the files if they're <1yr old. After a year, they're strictly on DVD, but I often have more than one version on DVDs, so if one fails I've still got another.

Worst case scenario is that my house burns down, as I don't have an offsite backup strategy (yet).

PLEASE!!DO NOT USE RAID 0 FOR A FILE SERVER!!!! maybe a VID editing system but not a production file server.

please! you do not need the extra speed, take a look at either raid 10 or 0+1. HDD's are fast and cheap these days. design your system around fault tolerance and ability to get back up and running

here is a fun little description
http://www.acnc.com/raid.html

Here is my current setup for my Mac Pro. Stock 160GB HD for System. I have 2 500gb in RAID 0 as my working/scratch disk drive. Every night, both sytem disk and RAID set get duplicated to external drives. The System drive to an external firewire drive and the RAID set to an external firewire RAID set with identical 500GB drives. (so that's 4 x 500 GB drives).

Chris, I chose to do this instead of a RAID 1 because I don't think live backup is necessary. As long as you make sure you are able to do a daily backup offline via firewire, then you are good to go.

In the near future, I may go the eSATA enclosure rout with 5 drives per enclosure, but I don't need that yet. I also have my backup process to DVDs similar to J. Scott Kelly above, but this is my current working drive/system setup.

Jan

That's an interesting point Jan.... thanks!

too....many....options......

I like that set up as well

You are right Chris, there are SO many options. I guess you just need to decide and run with it. Go ahead! lol

I guess I just need a 15 sided coin and then flip it huh?

RAID 5 is pretty slow at writing. It lets you create HUGE arrays while only "losing" one drive to parity, but the slowdown is very noticeable.

Don't forget that RAID doesn't replace backups. RAID arrays can - and do - fail.

haha! At least 15 sides!