This is my first post and I’m really impressed with all of the great advice you guys give to posters. I’ve found a lot of terrific information on setting up a Mac Pro for FCP but my situation is a little different since I use FCP only for hobby videos (mountain biking, skiing, etc.) These are complex projects not suited to iMovie, but I just want to be clear that I do not use FCP as a professional.
I have a MacPro with two dual-core processors, 4GB RAMM, a built-in RAID card and four 500GB drives. Currently I have all four drives setup as a RAID5 set with four volumes (setup in the following order):
1) Photoshop Scratch (10GB)
2) FCP Work Volume (250GB)
3) OS & Applications (50GB)
4) Data (1060GB)
I primarily use my MacPro for digital photography (Photoshop/Lightroom), iTunes, and general data. When I originally set this up over a year ago I had plans to get more heavily into video editing and spent weeks talking with experts on the different RAID levels and the best configuration. That’s how I arrived at the above config. I was told that RAID5 was the preferred solution and to create the volumes that needed to be the fastest first (scratch disks).In addition, I move every year or two and have had numerous HDs fail during/after a move. This is why RAID5 was appealing to me - I could recover from a single disk failure.
I am currently out of space on my Data volume and need to upgrade to Leopard, so I figured now is the best time to bite the bullet and re-evaluate my RAID configuration.
I read several threads on this forum that suggest using all 4 HDs in a RAID configuration may actually make the computer slower (news to me!) Is this true? So can you suggest the best setup for my intended use? I am willing to get an external solution like the G-RAID2 2TB drive to dedicate to FCP/Photoshop if needed. I also own (but am not currently using) a Transintl.com Pro Caddy (
http://www.transintl.com/store/categ...?Category=2704) that allows you to dedicate one of the optical drive bays for HD use (SATA drive gets hooked into IDE/ATA bus.) Here are the options I am considering:
Option 1: ($600 for 300GB more storage for Data – plus additional storage on external device)
1. Move OS & Apps to Pro Caddy 5th drive (non-RAID) ($0 – I have an extra drive already)
2. Move FCP disk to an external solution (if there is a better solution than G-RAID2, please let me know) ($600 for G-RAID2 2TB)
3. Create RAID5 array from all four disks and create a 10GB volume for PS scratch disk, and a second volume for Data (music, photos, general data) with the remainder of space.
Option 2: ($600 for approx 1TB more storage)
1. Move OS & Apps to Pro Caddy 5th drive (non-RAID) ($0 – I have an extra drive already)
2. Replace three of the 500GB drives with 1TB drives and configure as RAID5 volume for Data ($600)
3. Use the remaining 500GB drive for FCP
Option 3: Bail on RAID entirely. Upgrade individual HDs as needed…
Can any of you help me sort out what to do? My head is spinning with options… Are there disadvantages to having one large RAID5 volume for data? Is the Pro Caddy a bad idea? Should I bail on RAID completely?
(BTW, I am also building a NAS box with about 3.5TB of storage for a backup solution. I also plan to use Mozy online for offsite backup of my data – although after three weeks my backup is only at 7%...)
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