[jgrayperry]

I have a G4 MDD dual 866, with only the original 60GB drive in the original location (assume on the ATA100 cable?). I've purchased 2 new 160GB ATA100 Seagates and would like advice on the best setup for me. The new storage will be used for expanding and backing up the original, and for video editing. I do not know much about RAID, wondering if is going to be a good option for my setup? So I'd like to know:
Where to put the new drives (which bay)
If the old drive should be moved
If RAID is right for me, what options to choose

My guesses are put the old drive on the 66 and they two new ones on the 100. Beyond that, I am cluless. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.

[Scotttheking]

Based on what you wrote, I'd recommend against RAID of any kind.

[hadocon]

Originally posted by Scotttheking:
Based on what you wrote, I'd recommend against RAID of any kind.

Why would you do that?

jgrayperry seems to be a perfect candidate for a Raid setup. he/she can use the original 60GB drive as the boot drive, and Raid Level 0 (see here for more info). I guess jgrayperry could put the 60GB boot drive on the 66mhz bus, but will have to suffer having a relatively slow boot drive (also used for swap unless you screw around in UNIX), as long as you have lots of RAM this should not be a hige problem. Attach the 2x160GB drives in the 100mhz ports - then use Apple Raid tool. Or, you ould always buy a Raid card and have the benefits of no CPU overhead for Raid operations (faster), and you could keep the 60GB boot drive on the 100mhz bus as the Raid card will have it's own drive connections.

You will see a speed increase in disk based apps, which last time I checked FCP surely was. You will see increased performance in FCP's disk based operations like opening files, scrubbing, playing simultaneous tracks - you could be compressing something in compressor and editing in FCP at the same time (doing this on a single disk machine slows it considerably).

[Scotttheking]

Originally posted by hadocon:
Why would you do that?

My impression of the original post.

jgrayperry seems to be a perfect candidate for a Raid setup. he/she can use the original 60GB drive as the boot drive, and Raid Level 0 (see here for more info).

raid0 isn't going to provide much of any benefit, but it will increase the chances of data loss.

I guess jgrayperry could put the 60GB boot drive on the 66mhz bus, but will have to suffer having a relatively slow boot drive (also used for swap unless you screw around in UNIX),

Putting the drive on the ATA-4 bus will not lead to any performance decrease over the ATA-5 bus. One drive, especially a generic drive put in by an OEM, is not faster than the 66MB/sec that the interface can handle.

as long as you have lots of RAM this should not be a hige problem. Attach the 2x160GB drives in the 100mhz ports - then use Apple Raid tool. Or, you ould always buy a Raid card and have the benefits of no CPU overhead for Raid operations (faster), and you could keep the 60GB boot drive on the 100mhz bus as the Raid card will have it's own drive connections.

Software raid isn't as fast as hardware raid, and it takes CPU power. Personally, I won't touch software raid, except maybe for very specific uses under linux.
Also, attaching the drives as master and slave to a single incurs more of a performance hit, since ATA only allows one device to talk on the channel at a time.

You will see a speed increase in disk based apps, which last time I checked FCP surely was. You will see increased performance in FCP's disk based operations like opening files, scrubbing, playing simultaneous tracks - you could be compressing something in compressor and editing in FCP at the same time (doing this on a single disk machine slows it considerably).

There may be a small speed increase, but the setup isn't anywhere near optimal.
If you need a lot of disk performance, get a SCSI array.

[OreoCookie]

Actually (my experience comes from the PC world), software RAIDs are much faster than (ATA) hardware RAIDs. Expensive SCSI cards are different, obviously, but ATA hardware RAIDs are slower for RAID levels other than 0 or 1, otherwise, they are about the same.

Check out vinum for a good software RAID solution on the FreeBSD platform.

[SMacTech]

Originally posted by OreoCookie:
Actually (my experience comes from the PC world), software RAIDs are much faster than (ATA) hardware RAIDs. Expensive SCSI cards are different, obviously, but ATA hardware RAIDs are slower for RAID levels other than 0 or 1, otherwise, they are about the same.

Check out vinum for a good software RAID solution on the FreeBSD platform.

My experience is just the opposite. They certainly aren't much faster. Adaptec's white papers say just the opposite of your claim, regardless of ATA or SCSI implementation.

I am with Scott on all issues he presented.

I won't touch software raid at all.

[AngryAngel]

Originally posted by OreoCookie:
Actually (my experience comes from the PC world), software RAIDs are much faster than (ATA) hardware RAIDs. Expensive SCSI cards are different, obviously, but ATA hardware RAIDs are slower for RAID levels other than 0 or 1, otherwise, they are about the same.

I don't know of any Mac-compatible ATA hardware RAIDs that do anything other than 0 or 1.

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by SMacTech:
My experience is just the opposite. They certainly aren't much faster. Adaptec's white papers say just the opposite of your claim, regardless of ATA or SCSI implementation.

I am with Scott on all issues he presented.

I won't touch software raid at all.

Well, there were exhaustive tests by Germany's most respected computer mag (often quoted by TheRegister, and others), and the result was the opposite. The reason is simple: the CPU used (as far as I remember i960 at 66 MHz or something for the high end ATA card) is much slower than a typical CPU today (Mac or PC), and the performance impact on the system is marginal.

Adaptec is of course interested to sell their cards, so I wouldn't take for granted what their official page says. On the other hand, hardware RAIDs have advantages (such as being transparent for any OS), but that's clearly not an issue for the situation in question here.

I don't agree with most parts of Scotts post at all. SCSI is not automatically the way to go if you need performance, take a look at the XRaid (or similar devices by other manufacturers). SCSI is still the way to go for low seek times, but to say `if you need very high disk performance, go SCSI' is just a waste of money in most cases.

[Scotttheking]

Originally posted by OreoCookie:
Actually (my experience comes from the PC world), software RAIDs are much faster than (ATA) hardware RAIDs. Expensive SCSI cards are different, obviously, but ATA hardware RAIDs are slower for RAID levels other than 0 or 1, otherwise, they are about the same.

Check out vinum for a good software RAID solution on the FreeBSD platform.

Promise and other cards in their class don't count. They aren't true hardware raid.

As far as your statement about the CPU used, it doesn't matter as long as the CPU is fast enough to perform the task. Generalizing with "the high end ATA card" isn't a useful description. I'll assume you are referring to a 3ware card with that statement.

SCSI isn't always the way to go, I never said that. For the uses listed, I'd recommend a SCSI disk setup.

[Spliffdaddy]

How often is a hard disk affected by data corruption?

Not very often, huh?

If you double the risk of corruption, it's still a very unlikely occurance.

I've used "software striped" disk arrays since Win2000 was in beta -without any problems. Of course, my experiences may not relate to your - since it *was* Windows and I'm mostly just a casual user, not a hard-drive-killing professional.

If the data was *that* important, it would always have a backup. You don't trust your data to *one* disk, do you?

[Scotttheking]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
How often is a hard disk affected by data corruption?

Had a drive fail on me 2 weeks ago. Luckily it was in a server that had raid1.

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by Scotttheking:
Promise and other cards in their class don't count. They aren't true hardware raid.

As far as your statement about the CPU used, it doesn't matter as long as the CPU is fast enough to perform the task. Generalizing with "the high end ATA card" isn't a useful description. I'll assume you are referring to a 3ware card with that statement.

SCSI isn't always the way to go, I never said that. For the uses listed, I'd recommend a SCSI disk setup.

I wasn't talking about those, I was talking of `real' RAID cards, meaning with their own CPU. The 3ware cards are an example of that.

In the case of video, nowadays' ATA cards are fast enough and offer far better a bang for the buck than SCSI. If you are a professional, then things change. But then, investing in a faster machine (replacing the Dual 867) will increase productivity much more than when investing in a SCSI RAID.

[OreoCookie]

To demystify RAID: read this here, by far the best compendium about the theory I have seen.

http://www.storagereview.com/guide20.../hdd/hist.html

In particular, read the following two.

http://www.storagereview.com/guide20...lHardware.html
http://www.storagereview.com/guide20...lSoftware.html

Then think of what kind of RAID levels you can implement with two drives.
(Remember: I'm not arguing for theory's sake here, I'm just applying things to the case here.)

[SMacTech]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
How often is a hard disk affected by data corruption?

Not very often, huh?

Our RAID 5 with Fujitsu 15k rpm 36GB SCSI drives has lost at least 3 disk in 3 years. I had two drives fail last week, one in a desktop, a 40gb Maxtor and one in a laptop, a Hitachi.

[velodev]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
How often is a hard disk affected by data corruption?

Not very often, huh?

If you double the risk of corruption, it's still a very unlikely occurance.

BWAHAHAHAHA.... I'm laughing so hard I'm about to cry.

I've lost three hard drives this year. One laptop drive (who cares), and two very, very critical hard drives, both Western Digital 80Gb. Unless you feel paying close to $1200 for recovery is worth it in the long run, I no longer skimp on RAID controller's or setups.

3ware Escalade 7506. Hardware based RAID 1. Compatible in Windows or Linux (I wish there was a better Mac solution). That's my setup and only until now will I agree with you that data corruption is, in current RAID setup, unlikely.