[solaris]

Hi. I'm looking at getting a new mac for video editing, a few games and photoshop.

I am currently looking at the dual 1.42 powermac, but will probably wait until after july before buying (hangin' out for that 970 ).

I was looking at the BTO options and am thinking about getting it with 2 x 180GB ATA disks. The idea is to get a RAID controller card and stripe them for faster disk access.

My questions are:

1. Is the cost of the 2 disks a rip off (add £481 to cost).
2. Is there a preferred RAID controller card? I was looking at the SIIG ATA 133/100.
3. Nvidia Ti or ATI 9700?

[euphras]

1. Buy the HDs at some online distributor and install them on your own. Saves money!
2. don´t know
3. ATI

[turboSPE]

Originally posted by solaris:
Hi. I'm looking at getting a new mac for video editing, a few games and photoshop.

I am currently looking at the dual 1.42 powermac, but will probably wait until after july before buying (hangin' out for that 970 ).

I was looking at the BTO options and am thinking about getting it with 2 x 180GB ATA disks. The idea is to get a RAID controller card and stripe them for faster disk access.

My questions are:

1. Is the cost of the 2 disks a rip off (add £481 to cost).
2. Is there a preferred RAID controller card? I was looking at the SIIG ATA 133/100.
3. Nvidia Ti or ATI 9700?

Buying accessories from Apple will almost always cost more than from some other vendor. Have you considered using the internal raid software in OSX? I don't have any experience with it, but it may save a few dollars.

turboSPE

[tooki]

Striping is really hazardous to your data. By doing it, if one drive fails, the data on all drives in the array is gone.

Don't do it unless you keep nothing on it of any importance.

tooki

[D'Espice]

You don't need a RAID controller, Mac OS X has software RAID drivers which means you can save the money for the RAID controller. A software RAID is as fast and (un)save as a hardware RAID.

[Axo1ot1]

I'd say if you want to make a RAID get the stock computer and 2 SCSI disks an an atto card. That will be good for editing and you have plenty of room for a couple of HDs in the 66 MHz drive rack. That way you are running FCP (or whatever) from an ATA disk and using the internal RAID as a scratch disk. I'd recommend using the ATA as the audio scratch disk too if you are doing uncompressed (of course if you're doing DV, then that's all overkill and you should just get a big HD or two and use them on the ATA bus whic will be plenty fast for you).

[solaris]

Thanks for the responses guys! I understand that I halve the MTBF for the drives if I stripe 2 together, but as long as I make regular backups this should be ok.

I hadn't considered the internal software option though. Can you boot off a software striped boot disk under OS X?

As far as hw vs. sw raid, I think I'll try the software option first, then upgrade to a raid card if need be.

[D'Espice]

Originally posted by solaris:
I hadn't considered the internal software option though. Can you boot off a software striped boot disk under OS X?

Of course you can, otherwise it would be pretty useless, don't you think?
However you cannot install OS 9 on a software RAID 0 stripeset. The only way for me to get Classic running was getting an old 4GB harddrive, installing OS 9 on that harddrive then boot OS X and copy the files.
If you don't need Classic at all then that won't be a problem and you should seriuosly consider the software option - it's free and it's as fast as a hardware RAID controller.