[Meadowfield]

In anticipation of my new MacPro and have been thinking how I might set up the internal drives. Currently, on my G5, I am using a second drive for Time Machine and use an off site firewire disk for redundancy. I'd like to get the benefit of n so I plan on getting the Time Capsule when it arrives and will direct my Time Machine backups to it.

Aside from raid, I'd like your thoughts on disk management. Are there speed benefits to keeping the system on one disk and your data on another? Do you simply move the User's folder to another drive, and how/where would you instal XP for occasional use with Bootcamp?

[SierraDragon]

Optimizing mass storage depends on what apps you run, workflow, file sizes, etc.

-Allen Wicks

[Meadowfield]

Nothing atypical; routine domestic use.

[peeb]

Then don't bother - Time Machine will keep you out of trouble.

[svtcontour]

While not a mac, on my PC I've got things setup like this:

Disk0 - 15K SCSI 73GB, Operating system and applications
Disk1 - 15K SCSI 36GB, Swap file, Temp environment for system
Disk2 - 7200RPM SATA 250GB, Games, Work space for getting jobs done
Disk3 - 7200RPM SATA 250GB, System Images of current and previous operating systems

Network storage on free PIII server which has a small system drive and three 500GB drives. One pair of drives is a mirror set which has all my data. A firewire external enclosure attached to that computer has the third 500GB drive which is for weekly backup and incremental daily changes. After one week, the backup recycles. I want to keep the backup external so its easily portable if need be.

By having my OS on a seperate drive, it makes restores as well as switching between my operating systems a snap because there is not much data on the drive. Also I find the sytem to feel faster. The swap on a seperate drive also makes sense when you're hammering the computer and its swapping. If swap was on the same drive as everything else, it would be much slower when all the ram is used up.

I dont keep any important data on my computer. When a job is done, it goes straight to DVD or on my server. Paid $0 for the server and $95 per 500GB hard drive and $30 for the external enclosure. I'm happy with my server setup so far

Anyway this setup is way too extreme for most but I wanted to share it.