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Editing and running an OS from the same RAID drives?
Hi there. I just converted from PC to Mac, and on the PC you don’t want your media on the same drive as your OS or your editor. Too much demand on resources.
I just bought a Mac Pro with four 1 Gig drives. Currently my OS is on one drive and the other three are set up in a RAID 0 array through the Mac OS.
I don’t like that I have no redundancy in this setup, so I’m thinking about getting a RAID card installed and putting all four drives into a RAID 5, with OS 10.5 sharing the RAID with Final Cut and the media.
I edit HD using Cineform and DVCPro HD.
In your experience, do you see a problem with this? Should I put the OS on one drive and make a RAID out of the other three?
Thanks for any suggestios!
MIKE
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3 Replies
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Hi there,
I would think it may matter if you plan on doing many different HD streams and some more advanced editing.
However, if you are thinking of getting a raid card then you may likely have the budget for what I am about to suggest. Plan for growth right?!
Get a Caldigit Raid Card for $550. Get 4 drives and put them in raid 5. I used the WD640’s from newegg and they give me a standalone speed of over 100 MB/s read/write and they are only 7200! Using the Apple raid card I get a Raid 5 array that does 200 MB/s. The arraid totals 1.5 GB of usable space and the drives are about $80 each.
Then, I installed a velociraptor in the second optical bay and used 1 of the 2 internal SATA ports to hook it up. You can’t use boot camp with it like this but you can select it as your boot drive. We use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the current install of the os to the velociraptor, however we did this when it was fresh and you may have more than 300 GB already. I am sure you can figure that part out.
Now you have a Raid 5 array with a Velociraptor drive.
To do this you need the following:
Velociraptor – $300
Drive bay adapter – $40
Right angle sata cable (normal works to but it bends at a right angle in the end) – $??
Molex power adapter to Sata power (not sure of the proper name) – $??We just installed the Caldigit raid card on another graphics computer that will probably be doing video in the future. I am using that apple card on the main computer, good enough for my SD stuff right now, but when we upgrade to a Panasonic HD then I may change it over.
We then use a BlacX hardrive dock (usb 2.0+eSata) to do time machine backups of what we want. That way you can disconnect the HD from the dock at the end of the day and put it in a mediasafe (protection from fire) or take it offsite in your backpack.
Hope this helps.
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Same rule applies on a Mac…do not install the OS and the Media on the same drives. The CalDigit Raid card (cheaper than Apple, and you can install it yourself!) can do a protected raid with 3 drives. But if you want to use 4, there is a kit out there to help you install your system drive into the empty second optical bay. I did mine manually, so I don’t know the name of the kit. Google it.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Like Shane said, don’t put the OS on the RAID drive.
Also, rather than a RAID with redundancy, you might want to look into having a Time Machine setup instead. That way you can keep backups of your OS and your media.
Sean
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