RAID for Sessions/VI Library

[wonder]

I purchased a PCIe RAID enclosure and am going to set it up with some spare SATA drives I have lying around.

My question is, do the drives need to be exact same size? I have a few 1TB, a 2TB, and a few older 250GBs lying around.

And setting up a RAID 0 config is the way to go for speed as for as I know...is that correct?

Thanks!

[mikehalloran]

RAID 0 gives the best performance. The downside is that, when one drive goes down, you've lost everything. Since you should have your VIs backed up elsewhere (most are downloadable again from the makers and some come on hardware), this works well for VIs. Most of us will exclude it from a Time Machine backup as there's really no need.

You do not want to store work files of any kind onto a RAID 0 array.

http://www.techworld.com/storage/a-simp ... d-3220717/

Overall speed will be limited by the number of drives (more is faster) with HHD arrays being inherently slower than SSDs. There is an upper maximum speed limit determined by your pipeline or PCIe bus. On a Mac Pro 3.1, two SSDs might hit the speed limit but it might take four or more HHDs.

Yes, capacity is A+B+C etc. You do not want to go over 80% as that can compromise efficiency.

If using SSDs, TRIM often doesn't work on remote RAID arrays. Since you will write only on installation and updates, this isn't really much on an issue.

The advantage to HHDs is lower cost. The downside is higher heat and energy costs.

If looking to use HHDs, WD Red rated for NAS would be my recommendation. These have better bearings, lower heat/energy cost, 3 year warranty and longer life. NAS is used to build RAID arrays.

[James Steele]

I was given an old PC RAID array. It's in a PC tower type case and contains 7 1TB drives. I have a RocketRAID 2722 card in my Mac. I've been using it for projects and and also my VI/sample library, although I'm beginning to think that a much better route for me would be to go to SSD for my projects and for my VI's and then just make the array a dedicated Backup system using TimeMachine I suppose and then set it up with the level that is redundant wherein if a drive fails in the array, I just pull it and replace it and the data is automatically rebuilt by the array.

[wonder]

I purchased an enclosure on Amazon and in my haste, I bought the 2 bay enclosure and no the 4 bay enclosure.

But, c'est la vie.

I finally got it setup but had a 2TB and 1TB drives lying around so my RAID 0 isn't full capacity. I haven't put anything on the drives as of now but once I get a matching 2TB drive, I'll either use it to edit video or store my VI's on them.

They're standard HDD connected via eSATA enclosure. I have a Mac Pro 3,1 (2008) and am debating on whether to invest in another Mac Pro or somehow Hot Rod this Mac Pro.

[HCMarkus]

You DO have at least one SSD Wonder... correct?

'Cause if you haven't tried one yet, you are missing out on the single most inspiring upgrade currently available for you Mac. For me, it's all SSDs (except for backups).

I like James idea for the array. Which reminds me; time to rotate my Time Machine drives.

[wonder]

Oh yes. My OS drive is an SSD. Changed my world.

My VI's, Session Drives, et al are all internal SATA drives though.

[Steve Steele]

A word on Apple's RAID driver. It's old and it's single threaded. SoftRAID is multithreaded and has some great features. It's an improvement over Apple's RAID driver, except for one thing.

As of v5.5 on 10.11.6 SoftRAID was crashing my Mac Pro on shut down. I finally had to remove it. I'll check it again later.

SoftRAID seems to have gotten serious about their product again lately. Hopefully any current issue will be resolved soon.