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svdiogenes · Feb 1, 2008, 04:16 PM

Would this enclosure: - AMS Venus DS3R 3.5IN Black Aluminum IDE RAID Dual Hard Drive Enclosure Hot Swap Firewire (DS-2320DBK) - work with my 24" core 2 duo 2.4g intel iMAC as a good system back up solution. My primary use is the editing and production of a 20 min long video/still photo documentary project. I already purchased 2 - 500 gig Seagate Barracuda IDE drives. I also have one single drive enclosure (no drive yet) with a firewire 400 which I was going to use as an off site weekly backup.

Does this sound like a decent back up plan?? Will the AMS enclosure work as a mirror RAID system?? Anybody try this unit??

C.A.T.S. CEO · Feb 1, 2008, 05:35 PM

What RAID level is it at? Any drive that has FW should work with any iMac.

mduell · Feb 1, 2008, 09:31 PM

Yea should work fine, the product sheet explicitly lists Mac support. 500GB isn't much space for backups.

svdiogenes · Feb 5, 2008, 05:17 AM

Thanks for the replys all. I guess I'm new to the world of BIG DRIVES, coming from a Ti book with a 20 (upgraded to 60) gig drive! So 500 gig seems big at this point. Will leopards built in RAID provisions and Time Machine work nice with this AMS hardware?

mduell · Feb 5, 2008, 07:57 AM

Why would you use software RAID when you're buying an enclosure with hardware RAID?

Set the switches on the unit for mirror, put both drives in, plug into your Mac, and it will appear as a single 500GB volume which you can partition and use for Time machine.

svdiogenes · Feb 5, 2008, 04:02 PM

Thanks again mduell for your info.

As you can tell I am new to this topic. Can you explain the advantage/disadvantage to hard/soft ware RAIDS? And why would i partition the volume for use with Time machine?

Also could I get more backup bang for my buck by just using the proposed AMS enclosure unit as a linked 1 TB, 2 drive volume, and, then set up a separate 500GB IDE drive in my existing Macally 400 firewire enclosure?

That is, I would end up with a "two drive" backup system, (which actually contained three 500GB drives configured as a 1TB volume and a 500GB volume.

( note: I have been able to get my 500GB Seagate IDE drives @ $122 ea. which is a very good price here in BC, Canada. The AMS enclosure will be about $149 ).

mduell · Feb 5, 2008, 04:53 PM

Hardware RAID means that a chip in the enclosure is handling the mirroring or striping. This is generally more reliable and performant than software RAID, which is handled by your computer's operating system; hardware RAID is also OS-independent, so you can use it with computers running different operating systems.
The external drive is just a big block device; you have to partition/format it into at least one HFS+ partition to use it.

I don't understand what you're trying to achieve by buying another 500GB drive for another enclosure.

svdiogenes · Feb 6, 2008, 06:36 AM

Thanks for that info.

My plan is to have two separate external backups . One volume would be used as my system back up (assigned to Time Machine); the other would be a discrete drive as a redundant backup dedicated solely to the photos, video, and audio materials located on my iMAC's internal HD for my media productions. (I plan to do a series of these half hour productions - using a combination of film, slides, sound, and digital video interviews).

For a variety of reasons (cost availability, on-the-fly planning, or the lack of...) I have so far purchased two 500GB drives and one single drive enclosure. So now I am trying to plug the hardware holes in putting together this back up system. I hope this explains my thinking on this.

mduell · Feb 7, 2008, 04:42 PM

Time Machine will include all of your media files in its backup, so the second backup isn't really necessary.

I'd put the two 500s in the DS3R in RAID0 (striping) for a 1TB backup volume. If one of the drives fails you still have all your data on your internal drive.

svdiogenes · Feb 8, 2008, 04:25 AM

Thanks for your suggestion mduell. I might have gotten carried away with my backup planing. As a newbie it's hard to know just how paranoid to get about backups, especially reading some of the accounts on the web about how many hard drives seem to have failures. And these programs which I will be working on represent commitments to others (and ultimately to myself) which I don't what to screw up.

Do you keep an off site backup in case of real catastrophe? And as to the suggestion of a RAID0 - if one drive fails, would I be able to read data from the non failed drive? And my last ? is does Time Machine really need 1TB to back up my computer's 500GB drive??

mduell · Feb 8, 2008, 08:32 PM

If one drive fails from a RAID0, no data is recoverable.
Time Machine only needs 500GB to back up a 500GB drive (less, even), but with 1TB you can keep a longer history of deleted files and better file copy performance (full disks get very slow).

svdiogenes · Feb 23, 2008, 03:55 PM

Just a quick report back this drive enclosure w/ 2 - 500g seagate barracuda IDE drives is connected and working fine as a 500g RAID 1 Volume. I am currently using it as the designated time machine drive for my iMac.

When I start editing video I will be getting a larger singe external drive to use as my time machine back up volume, and I will change the AMS dual drive unit to a RAID 0 to get more capacity and speed (firewire 800 + RAID O) as a scratch dick for the video editing process.