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OSX Software R.A.I.D
I’ve just bought the new Mac Pro 8-core and as a large number of my projects are now filmed on solid state camera’s, I am becoming increasingly concerned over data back-up.
At the moment I have turned HDD 3 & 4 into a Raid Mirrored set, with the Block Size set to 256k and set to “Auto rebuild RAID sets”. I’ve not transferred anything to it yet, as I want to finish a couple of jobs before I do the big move from my old machine.
Is this the best option?
Is it going to waste processing power?
How easy is it to repair this RAID set if one of the drives fails? (I’m assuming I just replace it and it gets rebuilt).I have heard very mixed reviews about pretty much every RAID option, bearing in mind I can’t afford a dedicated Hardware RAID. I’ve also heard the auto rebuild on OS X isn’t too reliable, but maybe I was just panicking and looking for bad press.
Thanks
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4 Replies
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You probably CAN afford a dedicated hardware RAID. Check out the CalDigit RAID card – it’s sublime, and reasonably priced.
https://www.CalDigit.com/RAIDCard/
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I set up my Mac Pro with a Raid like you mentioned to hold my video projects, then later reconfigured it to use drive 2,3,&4 with 500 meg drives. It’s been working well for over a year. I’m clocking data read & write speed of around 116 MB per sec at 2/3 full.
Alan Stephens
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I also have 3 500gb drives in RAID 0 (striped) in my mac pro, works like a charm. Though every now and then I check with disc utility, as in the past I have had a few bum drives give off S.M.A.R.T errors in disc utility, ended up replacing all 3 drives at that time just to be safe and things have been fine for the past year, though it’s looking like I’m going to need to drop in 3, 1 TB drives in the near future as my work increases.
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Thought I’d update this thread. I just had to rebuild my 1TB internal OS/X software raid array, and, after backing up the remaining drive, the OS performed a rebuild with no problems in about 3 hours on the 1TB drive. So while I would never rebuild without backing up, if you were absolutely in a crisis to get something done quickly, it appears that you can rebuild the RAID 1 (mirrored drives) without destroying the data on the remaining drive. The failure of the RAID was not due to the hard disk. It was due to a mechanical failure of the slot it was in, due to a mistake made by a technician reinserting it (one of the drives) after installing a blue ray disk. So no blame on any drive makers, nor Apple. Hope this helps!
Alf
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