Optimizing 2008 Mac Pro with hard drives

Adobe Premiere Pro

Optimizing 2008 Mac Pro with hard drives

Posted by Jan Von bayern on October 19, 2014 at 7:26 pm

i just ran the Blackmagic hard drive speed test and was shocked to see what the difference in speed of my internal hard drives is. A new 4TB hard drive ran around 150 MB/sec while my actual system drive (50% usage) only showed up with 50MB/sec. Other internal drives are even slower. My G-Raid is the only satisfactory one but I couldn’t measure it today.

So what’s the best setup for my internal drives. What’s a good but not too pricey solution? (I’m going to get a new Mac eventually) 2 raids?

Jimmy Brunger replied 11 years, 6 months ago 2 Members · 5 Replies
5 Replies

Jimmy Brunger
October 21, 2014 at 8:19 pm

I previously had a standard sata for system/apps, then media/projects on a fast network raid (10GbE) then scratch/previews drive was a 3 drive sata internal raid-0. That got about 250mbps. Now have two internal SSDs for sys/scratch and getting about 450mb+ Each

——————————-
Adobe CC 2014
MacPro 3,1 8-core 3.2GHz / 32GB RAM / NVidia Quadro 4000 / OSX 10.8.7
Decklink Extreme+ 3D / 1TB SSD scratch / 6TB XServe + United Digital RAID on 10GbE
Jan Von bayern
October 22, 2014 at 4:18 am

Thank you, this helps.
What kind of footage can you work with on your system?
Do you do 4K and raw? How about multiple layers of video, effects and grading?

Thanks again, Jan
Jimmy Brunger
October 22, 2014 at 9:02 am

Well, we were (and are) using a networked 10GbE RAID for footage….however from memory the 3 x 1TB SATA RAID got about the same throughput as our network (250mbps roughly)

This is enough to capture 1080 uncompressed 10bit QTs through a decklink. Will also let you edit a couple of streams of this. R3D 4k also good for editing with – but I suspect alot of the work being done to run that is from my Quadro card using OpenCL. This is an important addition for PPro these days. You are limited on options with the 2008 (3,1) Mac Pro, but Quadro 4000 runs fine on mine. Cheaper alternative is the GTX680.

EDIT: The SATA SSD scratch I have now is actually about 270MB r/w not 450+!….I was getting mixed up with a new Mac Pro we are testing at the moment, which is getting an insane 750MB+ from the internal Flash SSD!

——————————-
Adobe CC 2014
MacPro 3,1 8-core 3.2GHz / 32GB RAM / NVidia Quadro 4000 / OSX 10.8.5
Decklink Extreme+ 3D / 1TB SSD scratch / 6TB XServe + UD RAID on 10GbE
Jan Von bayern
October 24, 2014 at 10:21 pm

Thanks again.
So you have 2 different SSDs for scratch and system? Or is it the same?
AT OWC they have a sale at the moment and selling the 480GB for $262!!
So I was thinking about getting two of those instead of one 960GB

Does this make sense?

I also have the Quadro 4000 and I think it’s great.
Jimmy Brunger
October 25, 2014 at 7:15 am

Yes one for each!

——————————-
Adobe CC 2014
MacPro 3,1 8-core 3.2GHz / 32GB RAM / NVidia Quadro 4000 / OSX 10.8.5
Decklink Extreme+ 3D / 1TB SSD scratch / 6TB XServe + UD RAID on 10GbE

Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up

Creative Communities of the World Forums