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Basic sATA drive setup for raiding and backup
Hi all-
Currently my workflow only consists of two LaCie 1TB FW800 drives, one which is backed up to mirror the other, every day. I want to get a more comprehensive backup procedure that allows me to fall back on incremental versions and files, like TimeMachine.
What I want to do, is start with a 2TB drive, or two, inside the internal bays of my MacPro. I have 4 empty bays. I want to Raid the two LaCie’s so it’s one large 2tb drive, and then put in 2TB of drive space into the internal bays on my machine.
I’ve never had the need to have Raids, so I’m inexperienced. My first question is, should I get one 2TB drive, and not Raid it? Or should I get 2 1TB drives, and Raid those? Will either of these situations give me any sort of performance advantage?
Secondly, what sort of drives can I focus on for good performance? All of my working files for video will be on one drive, and I will be rendering onto the normal internal “Macintosh HD” in the machine.
Any insight would be helpful. Thank you!
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11 Replies
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I would think about installing two 2TB internal drives and setting those up in RAID-1 (mirror). You can then RAID-0 your external LaCie drives and perform incremental backups to your mirrored drive set.
Luis Rodriguez
Proavio
12221 Florence Ave.
Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670
Dir: 562-777-3498
Main: 562-777-3488 X109
Fax: 562-777-3499
Email: luis@proavio.com -
That’s exactly what I’d like to do. Do you recommend any internal drives that are good for performance, and this type of setup?
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Budget will be the determining factor. I would recommend a reliable drive model such as the WD RE4 enterprise-class drives or Hitachi. Both offer top performance and reliability.
Luis Rodriguez
Proavio
12221 Florence Ave.
Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670
Dir: 562-777-3498
Main: 562-777-3488 X109
Fax: 562-777-3499
Email: luis@proavio.com -
Budget is flexible (i.e. don’t really have one). Does that drive you mentioned above offer above-average speed, or is it comparable to a “typical speed” drive?
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To clarify- for instance I know that a lot of people use expensive drives such as the WD Velociraptor. I’m not sure I need a drive like that, but if it offers any sort of bump in speed over what I have now, which is essentially just an extern FW800 enclosure (not sure of internals) then I’d consider it.
I try to work with projects that are 720p, and no higher. Mostly it’s motion graphics that involve a lot of vector. Every now and then I will throw in some stock footage that may be 1080p, but these are usually moderate to low bit rates like 25mbps.
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The WD RE4 will definitely meet your performance requirements without sacrificing reliability. We use the RE4 drives in our mission critical, SATA-based solutions with excellent results. I personally do not have any experience with the Velociraptor models. I would stay away from drives labeled as GP (Green Power) or LP (Low Power). They are known to be flakey when used in RAID configurations.
Luis Rodriguez
Proavio
12221 Florence Ave.
Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670
Dir: 562-777-3498
Main: 562-777-3488 X109
Fax: 562-777-3499
Email: luis@proavio.com -
Thank you all for the suggestions.
Would it be smartest to set time machine to backup incrementally from the mirrored drive, in order to preserve working performance on the working drive?
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I would get two 2TB internal drives, but I would have them as RAID-0 to work from, for best performance. Then continue to use the external LaCie’s in RAID-1 for backups. Although, this still only gives you 1TB of redundant backup storage. Note* I have replaced the drives in three LaCie D2 Quadra’s with 2TB drives, without issue. Two of which were originally 1TB and the other was 500GB.
I pick my drives from the Western Digital Internal Product list and then Google search the model number of the one I want for the best deal. Link- https://www.wdc.com/en/products/catalog/default.aspx?segment=1
FWIW, My setup:
Mac Pro Bay 1- 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black (WD1002FAEX) as the OS or “System Drive”.
Mac Pro Bay’s 2, 3 & 4- 2TB Western Digital Caviar Black (WD2002FAEX) 6TB RAID-0, as the Capture Scratch or “Media Drive”
LaCie 8TB 4Big- For backups (currently RAID-0, soon to be formatted as RAID-5)
Three 2TB LaCie D2 Quadras- For Misc. use (which I replaced the original drives (they were either 500GB or 1TB) with 2TB Western Digital drives, no problems).
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Gotcha- I simply have no experience with raid setups, so this is allll new to me.
So two drives in Raid 0 will mirror eachother (and show up as two drives in the finder?)
Two drives in Raid 1 would simply be recognized as one larger drive, correct?
Curious- what is the purpose of Raid 5?
Thanks!
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Both RAID 0 & 1 (and 5) show up as one drive.
RAID-1 (mirror) writes the same information to to both drives, (so you get 1TB of storage with two 1TB drives) if one drive fails you still have all the info on the other drive.
RAID-0 (stripe) writes information “across” both drives (so you get 2TB of storage from two 1TB drives), alternating from one to the other which gives you faster performance but if one drive fails you lose everything.
Raid-5 is more complicated and requires a RAID controller and three+ drives. It is both redundant and higher performance. Wiki has good explanations on types of RAID.
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