OT – RAID Question

[Rafael Amador]

[Wayne Marx] “I plan to use the 3TB’s and make them RAID O.”
Hi wayne,
I may be wrong, but I think that RAID-0 works with two HDs writing half of the data on each driver.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Tom Matthies]

I believe that the RAID 0 configuration is not just limited to two drives. I still run an older Ciprico RAID (it just won’t die!) that has five drives configured as RAID 0.

E=MC2+/-2db

[Max Frank]

Thanks Guys for taking the time to answer…

So Tom, I should be good to go.

Any gotchas?

W

[David Roth weiss]

[Rafael Amador] “I may be wrong, but I think that RAID-0 works with two HDs writing half of the data on each drive”

That’s actually RAID-1, which mirrors drive 1 to drive 2, thus creating redundancy.

RAID-0 is a group of drives all striped together for max throughput, but no protection or redundancy. You can stripe as many drives as you’d like, with theoretical throughput going up with every drive added – i.e. four drives striped together as RAID-0 have nearly 4X the throughput of a single drive.

David Roth Weiss
ProMax Systems
Burbank
DRW@ProMax.com
http://www.ProMax.com

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[Max Frank]

David,

Thanks a lot.

Coming from you, I’ll take that as the final word 😉

All the best,

Wayne

[Max Frank]

David,

One last question:

Does it matter if I’m using different drive brands [ie, Seagate, Hitachi], and different sizes, [ie, 1TB & 2TB]?

Again, this is for a software RAID 0 inside the Mac Pro.

Thanks,

Wayne

[Thomas Morter-laing]

Yes it does, even if theyre the same size, different drives have different ways of working and different levels of cache etc- it may be fine but may go VERY slow. I would get 3 of the same drive.

Tom Morter-Laing
Twitter- @TomTheEditor
_________________________________________________
Editor, Certified Apple Product Proffessional, 2010
——————————————-

Equipment (not for ‘bragging’, but in case it’s relevant to future posts :D): Canon 7D, with Rode NTG2.
iMac 27″ intel i7 3.4GHz, 12GB RAM, ATI HD 6970M [2GB GDDR5], 2x G-Tech G-RAID (0) 2TB over Thunderbolt via Sonnet Echo ExpressCard/34 Thunderbolt adapter and Tempo™ SATA ExpressCard/34. Elgato Turbo H264HD.

[Max Frank]

Thanks a lot – that complicates things a little for me, but it’s good to know.

Tx,

W

[Rafael Amador]

[David Roth Weiss] “RAID-0 is a group of drives all striped together for max throughput, but no protection or redundancy. You can stripe as many drives as you’d like, with theoretical throughput going up with every drive added – i.e. four drives striped together as RAID-0 have nearly 4X the throughput of a single drive.”
Today I learnt something new.
Perhaps because the all the drivers i have with RAID-0 are dual disk, I thought that that was the only way to set it.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[David Roth weiss]

[Rafael Amador] “I thought that that was the only way to set it.”

RAID-1 is not something you’d typically want to use for editing anyway Rafa, it’s too expensive (you only get 50% useable storage). It’s better suited for things like copying SD or P2 cards in the field (because it essentially creates an instant backup), or for system drive redundancy as in the dedicated two-drive RAID-1 enclosure I reviewed here: https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/Stardom-Pro-Review/1.

And, for the record, the big enclosures you see from all the manufacturers, which are typically configured as RAID-5 these days, could also be configured as RAID-0, just like your 2-drive enclosures from G-Tech, but RAID-5 protected storage has an advantage in that you are safe should any single drive fail. Plus, you only lose about 10% of your storage volume and little only a very slight performance hit in return for the protection you gain.

David Roth Weiss
ProMax Systems
Burbank
DRW@ProMax.com
http://www.ProMax.com

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.