Pegasus R4 formatting question….

Storage & Archiving

Pegasus R4 formatting question….

Posted by Andrew Clark on September 21, 2012 at 9:50 pm

Hello –

Seeking advice on the best way to format a Pegasus R4 unit.

Looking at Disk Utility (in Mac OS), I see the only options are:

– Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
– Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrytpted)
– Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)
– Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled, Encrypted)
– MS-DOS (FAT)
– ExFAT

Now the options for formatting appear a bit different in the Promise RAID unit (utilizing their Promise RAID Utility).

First, it gives me the option to select the Partition Type:
– GPT
– APM
– MBR

Second, it gives me the option to select the Format Type:
– Journaled HFS+
– HFS+
– Case sensitive HFS+
– Case sensitive Journaled HFS+

Kind of baffled by which selection(s) would be best utilized for editing video.

Any suggestions are more than welcome!!

Thanks.

Andrew Richards replied 13 years, 7 months ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
3 Replies

Andrew Richards
September 22, 2012 at 3:36 am

tl;dr = You want a GPT-partitioned, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) aka Journaled HFS+ formatted Pegasus for media.

What all that stuff means:

Filesystems

– Mac OS Extended (Journaled) = Journaled HFS+
– Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrytpted) = Journaled HFS+ with FileVault 2 whole disk encryption
– Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled) = Journaled HFS+ that is case-sensitive on file names and directories
– Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled, Encrypted) all of the above
– MS-DOS (FAT) = oldest common denominator, aka FAT32, file sizes limited to 4GB, typical for thumb drives
– ExFAT = Microsoft’s new platform-agnostic filesystem, useful if you need to use a volume on both Mac and Windows

Partition types

– GPT = GUID Partition Table (Intel Mac bootable)
– APM = Apple Partition Map (PowerPC Mac bootable)
– MBR = Master Boot Record (Windows bootable)

You can partition and format with either Disk Utility or the Promise RAID Utility, they both yield the same result (though Disk Utility no loner offers un-journaled HFS+, and that’s a good thing).

Best,
Andy
Andrew Clark
September 22, 2012 at 6:07 pm

Thanks Andy. (Cool name by the way!!)

Researching some more, I found an explanation of what Journaling actually does:

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT2355#

The article states:

….”In most cases, the impact of journaling upon data access performance are unnoticeable to users, but its implementation may not be practical for servers where data access demands outweigh its benefits….”

I’m just wondering HOW much of a performance hit that Journaling actually affects video editing.
Andrew Richards
September 22, 2012 at 9:16 pm

[Andrew Clark] “I’m just wondering HOW much of a performance hit that Journaling actually affects video editing.”

Negligible. When it was new a decade ago, you might have considered going without it for bleeding edge workflows, but today the benefits vastly outweigh the minuscule difference in performance.

Best,
Andy

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