Mac Pro :: Software RAID Versus Hardware RAID?
Apr 20, 2010
I am planning on getting a 2010 MP when they come and have a question about it. I am 90% sure that with my budget, I will not be able to after a RAID card. I am wondering if software RAID would be alright or if it's so bad it's not worth doing. Also, there is small chance that I could buy a RAID card later on, how would I install it? I will be using it for 3D animation with Maya and some zbrush modeling. Also I will be doing some Photoshop and illustrator and maybe some gaming on win 7 boot camp. Feel free to list any other pros and cons about either a software RAID or hardware RAID, I wana make sure I have all the details before making a final decision on it.
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Oct 8, 2010
Okay, so... To make a raid 60, you make a raid 6 first then stripe that. If you started with a 4 disk raid 6 array and increased your number of disks to 8 when you stripe it, I have no trouble visualizing performance and capacity advantages.
However, I'm having trouble visualizing trade offs, speed or capacity differnces if you compared a 8 drive raid 6 vs an 8 drive raid 60.
If you are not Nanofrog, but you did stay at a holiday inn last night, you are welcome to reply as well.
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May 16, 2007
I have a PowerMac G5 and need to purchase an internal RAID card to create a RAID 1 mirror of the system drive... one that will allow me create a Hardware RAID 1 mirror, not software RAID through OS X.
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Dec 2, 2009
I just bought a Guardian Maximus RAID1 kit and I have two 1TB drives in it. I'm using it over Airport Extreme as an airdisk (mac osx 10.6.2)
My question is simply: am I running a risk by partitioning it into two partitions? Should I ever have to rebuild the failed disk (which I understand is really simple with the Guardian Maximus) - will it have trouble doing two partitions? I'm using one 500gb partition for time machine and one 500gb partition as redundant itunes/media.
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Jan 28, 2009
I have a Lacie ext hard drive with 2 x 250gb HD that were one RAIDed into a single 500gb HD. I ran this update Lacie firmware update: http://www.lacie.com/support/drivers...r.htm?id=10053 And now my HD will only show up as two separate HDs of 250gb instead of a single RAID HD of 500gb.
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May 1, 2008
I have a macpro with 4 x 1tb drives
Is it possible to get a highpoint raid controller and put those 4 drives in a raid 5 array (and then create partitions inside that array) - or do you need to have 1 drive by itself for the operating system, and then create a raid array using the remaining 3 drives?
Lastly, are the highpoint 3500 series a decent card? and fully compatible?
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May 20, 2009
I have a new Mac Pro Quad 2.93 with the Mac RAID card installed with four 1TB drives setup in a RAID 5 array. When creating the volumes in the RAID utility, you can not edit them, resize, etc. If one large volume is created in the RAID utility, you can then partition that one volume using the Apple Disk Utility, which then allows you to resize if needed.
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Sep 13, 2009
I'm using the software RAID right now. Everything is set as RAID 10. I want to move to a RAID card� if I keep it as RAID 10 will I still need to redo everything?
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Apr 7, 2009
Having spent that much on a computer, added to the fact that I'm now starting to get more music/audio freelance work, means I'm keen to get a decent backup system going. I aim eventually to get a 1tb external drive and use time machine to backup my samples drive, but what do you reckon would be the best option for the system drive?
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Jan 28, 2008
ive put 4 of the hitachi 1tbs in my new mac pro.. and i really want to do Raid on them eventually.. and buy the pricey apple raid card.. i'll do it.. but speed wise:
How fast is a Sata connection straight from HD>Motherboard... ~75mb/s?
Is the Raid 5 config with all those drives much faster... around ~110mb/s?
Do you know if there is anyway to get a 5th drive into the raid 5 array? using the ODD space.. or some externals too... i need as much as space as possible...
And boot camp wont work with raid card anymore? I was thinking to have the startup disc be a raptor to increase speed on the apps, how would it integrate with the raid card, etc
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Nov 16, 2009
I have a RAID 0 set up with two 1.5TB HDs. I am doing some reorganizing and want to take all the data on the RAID 0 and move it to one of the hard drives in the RAID 0 and create to single drives. Is there any way of moving all the data from a RAID 0 onto one of the HDs?
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May 15, 2009
I have never setup RAID before and this question may be totally stupid for that matter.
Can I setup RAID 1 (or call it mirroring) without the RAID card? I have two 1TB internal drives in my Mac Pro and I want to mirror them. I don't want to spend another 700 bucks just to setup a mirror.
Disk Utility shows some RAID options, but I am not sure how to use them, or if they will work at all without the RAID card.
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Feb 14, 2010
On my 2009 Mac Pro, OS X's disk utility seems to allow the provision of making a mirror RAID or a stripe RAID.
Is it possible to shove in 2 drives, make a RAID 0 for two of them, and then add in 2 more drives to make a RAID 1 out of that RAID 0? (a RAID 0+1?)
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Dec 12, 2010
I have a silly RAID question, and I can't seem to find an answer via the search.
I have 4 disks that I want to put in a striped raid. One of those disks (disk 1) has data that I'd like to keep.
If I put these 4 disks in the striped raid will I lose the data that is on disk 1?
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Aug 5, 2008
Currently I have a stock 320G drive installed with a 750G F1 Spinpoint installed as a Time Machine. I have maxed the 320 out so I'm looking to get a bigger drive.
Question: looking at the F1 Spinpoints, should I do 1x750 with 32M cache? Or 2x400G in a software RAID0? The 400s have a 16 Meg cache, so 32M total.
What's better? Do you think I'll see a better performance boost by striping over 2 drives with 16M cache each, or sticking with 1 drive with a 32M cache? And with the 2x400, I'll gain about 50 Gigs of storage over the 750G drive.
2x400 is $156
1x750 is $125
Is this a decent boost for only an additional $25, or should I just save a drive bay and get 1 drive?
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Oct 19, 2007
My Mac is beginning to run low on free HDD space. I'd like to add a second internal HDD to boost space. However, I don't like having a completely separate HDD icons because I can never remember which files are on which disk, not to mention a lot of copying between the two.
I'm considering adding a second HDD and combining the two into a RAID setup. Do I have to reformat my existing disk, or can I just add the second HDD's storage onto my existing disk with Disk Utility?
If I can just pop in a second HDD and add its capacity to the existing one's, that'd be ideal. Having to clear off the existing disk before joining the two would be a chore, though.
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Sep 25, 2010
I have a RAID 0 set up on my 2009 MP. I am using two 2TB Caviar Blacks and have my boot drive on a OCZ 120GB Vertex. I have 50GB of iTune music on that drive and want to move it to the RAID 0.
Is it as simple as using the preferences on iTunes and choosing the 'Data' volume (name of my RAID 0) and assigning iTunes to that drive? Is this the guide I need to follow?http://macperformanceguide.com/Setti...ing-iApps.html
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Dec 17, 2010
LSI 9240-8i SAS RAID for BootCamp only. Will it be bootable for BootCamp? Anyone using that card? I need to connect 4 SSD drives to work with my Mac Pro for Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.
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Feb 24, 2008
Ive heard conflicing statments that the raid is software/hardware. anyone know for sure what it is (Im not talking about that card you can buy).
If it is software raid does this take a toll on the processors? is it serious or does it not matter at all.
IF it does matter. should I buy a exteran raid card? is there a mac compatible one. I just need basic raid0.
I just bought 2 samsung spinpoint F1 750s in anticipation of my new mac. But just want to make sure that raid is a wise decision.
for those who are thinking about replying about the dangers of raid. I know. I have time machine. if the raid goes down then so be it. such is life. I will have backups.
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Nov 8, 2009
OK I do some Video Editing and Motion Graphics with FCP and Adobe After Effects.
I have a Mac Pro 2009 with 4 1TB Drives and 2 1TB Lacie Fire Wire 800 Drives.
This is the setup i have
1st Drive Mac OSX
2nd Drive is Windows 7 OS
3rd & 4th Striped and Mirrored to the 2 Lacies External Drives that are Striped. (raid 1 + 0)
My first question: is this a bad system? should i set it up a different way?
Second: is If a Drive goes out in the Raid 1+0 how will i know and how can i put a new drive in to fix it? How does this work?
Third: I set the RAID up with disk utility, is this ok, bad or good?
Fourth: IF the the OS Drive goes out will and i replace it and format it, will the RAID 1+0 Still be there? some where i read that its OS dependant?
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Feb 19, 2010
I've never set up a RAID before. I'm about to purchase an 09 MP through Apple and was looking at the Apple and CalDigit RAID cards before I started reading these forums. If the experts are saying that the Areca ARC-1212 works better than both of those at half the price, I'm sold.
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Oct 7, 2010
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well it is a newer piece of gear came out in 2010. uses a different raid engine. The JMB393 CHIPSET. IT IS SMALL low cost. I may buy it and test it out. uses 2.5 inch drives. 5 wd scorpio blacks run about 300 bucks and this is 130. if you get fast read /write over 200mb/s it may be a good piece of gear for some.
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Oct 9, 2010
I'm running my MP all the time because the Areca Raid card will not allow me to sleep it. It is actually a bit annoying because I sometimes sleep in the room and the MP 4.1 has relatively loud CPU heat sink fans.
Has anybody figured a way to make the Areca cards sleep?
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Nov 18, 2010
I have been searching for a good raid controller with ports for both internal & external drives. Does this exist on the mac side?
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Nov 28, 2010
I have a 2009 MacPro. SSD has the boot and apps from the 2nd Optical Drive. Original 1x4TB drives are in Raid 0 and have all the data (home folder etc). They also have the original OSX and apps which are no longer in use since everything boots off the SSD.
I want to erase the 4 raid drives (disconnect raid all together) (data all backed up to a drobo). Use first 3 drives as new storage and the 4th as bootcamp.
however, when I try to erase the raid data drives, it says it can't unmount the disk (yes, have no apps running other than disk utility from the SSD apps)
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Nov 30, 2010
I was inquiring as to buying a raid-6 array from a well known company. I received the following as part of a pre-sales discussion. I have never heard this before, but wanted to seek others opinions as it sounds just too bizarre to be true - I mean how can people run snow leopard server if this is the case and manage data? He is recommending Raid-0 arrays backed up to another raid-0 array nightly, fwiw. For the record, I'm looking at Atto hardware cards and mini-SAS 8 bay enclosures, not software raid. Text of interest:
"These days a drive failure isn't the most common means of losing data. What we see the most problems with is what's called data corruption. It's when the data stored on a drive becomes scrambled for one of several reasons. On a software based RAID 0 it's usually easily repaired with tools like Disk Warrior or Tech Tools Pro. When the problem occurs on a Hardware based RAID 5 or RAID 6 the parity can quickly become unreadable making the RAID unusable by the computer. There are no tools that can repair the corruption on a parity RAID once it reaches a certain point. The problem arises because the parity data is stored across all of the drives, and in the case of a RAID 6 it has 2 sets of parity stored on each drive making corruption a huge problem.
If everything is going correctly and your workflow is correct you shouldn't see much corruption. We do see a lot occurring when video is stored on drives, and at times software or OS updates cause corruption all by themselves. OSX is famous for the problem since 10.5 came out. One common way to create problems for yourself is dragging and dropping files from one location to another. When you drag and drop you do not get the whole file, some of the index is lost. Do this enough and you'll have a problem because it's cumulative. Try this; do a "Get Info" on a file and note the file size. Then drag that file to another location and do a "Get Info" on the destination file copy. You'll see that the new copy is smaller, it's lost some index data. Do this enough and the file can become unreadable and will have to be repaired. Do it enough on a parity RAID and you can make the file unreadable and irreparable."
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Dec 15, 2010
finding a SAS RAID card
2010MacPro, now need to support 2XminiSAS 6G / s of RAID Card
Need to support Mac os boot, and BootCamp windows boot
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Dec 29, 2010
I bought a 240 GB SSD OWCCan I add a second one of those in my MacPro and format it to Raid 0?I didn't buy the Raid Edition.
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Jun 26, 2007
A quick question to all you developer's out there that got a hold of a Leopard-copy.
I would like to change my current X-serve setup. Unfortunately Disk Utility does not allow me to do RAID 5. Just RAID 0 or 1 + Concatenated (=JBOD). Did this change in Leopard?
Silly thing is I have a 3x300Gb config and RAID 5 (1X600Gb) just makes a lot more sense than 1x 300GB+ 1x300GB in mirror...
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Jan 28, 2008
I just ordered a new Mac Pro 2.8 with the primary purpose of doing video editing on Final Cut. (5-45 min. videos here and there). Because of my budget, I cannot afford the the $800 price tag on the apple raid card but I would like to optimize my rendering and writing times. A lot of the forums I have read do not distinguish between software raid and hardware raid.
So here's my 2 questions.
1. Will I benefit from using the software raid in Disc Utility or would I be better off just using a separate scratch/write disc?
2. With such a fast processor and 3 gig Sata HDs, will raid 0 improve speed enough to make a significant performance jump anyway?
I would use a separate hd for my programs and regular files.
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