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mrmister · Dec 1, 2006, 09:19 PM

I have a large group of FW hard drives daisy chained to my MacBook Pro, and in their place I am thinking of upgrading to a FW800 RAID, like this one:

1TB OWC Mercury Elite-AL PRO FW800/400+US... (ME8SRS10TB32) at OWC

What I'm wondering is will I regret not getting something with eSATA onboard? Looking at tests it looks like FW800 is plenty fast for my needs...I get along with FW400--even switching everything to FW800 should be much quicker, but I could honestly stick with FW400 if I needed to.

Also, does anyone have opinions/horror stories about the reliability of RAID 0 configurations? I know if one of the two drives dies I lose them both--can I DiskWarrior them separately or together? Will any "normal" diagnostic tools work if I get into trouble?

I'm posting here as I'm most interested in people who use PB and MBPs with the choice between onboard FW800 and eSATA.

Javizun · Dec 1, 2006, 11:51 PM

i want that drive so bad-saving for it as we speak
i been doing alot of HD content on my macbook pro and the fw800 comes in handy even though i heard esata is faster.

SierraDragon · Dec 2, 2006, 12:18 AM

I use the 640 MB version of that OWC drive on FW 800 and it works great. Just treat a RAID 0 drive as a single drive that has 2x the chance of failure - meaning back it up routinely.

Today I ordered a 12 ounce portable 100 GB 7200 RPM OWC drive for field use with my 17" C2D MBP running Aperture.

-Allen Wicks

MattJeff · Dec 2, 2006, 02:31 PM

Originally Posted by mrmister

... I know if one of the two drives dies I lose them both...

it thought thats what Raid drives were doing was protecting your info so if you lost one it was saved to a mirror? im a bit confused now.

mrmister · Dec 2, 2006, 03:56 PM

It depends on the kind of RAID--you are thinking of mirroring, rather than striping.

RAID - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

SciFrog · Dec 2, 2006, 06:30 PM

I just got two 500GB Samsung SATA HD and thinking of this FireWire Depot - FireWire USB SATA - FWBU2SATA35DMR FireWire 800 1394b) & USB 2.0 Combo to dual SATA External Enclosure enclosure for a RAID 1.

Total will come out to $480 for a higher quality product (hardware RAID 1).

eSATA is missing, but by the time the Macs get it standard, the eSATA enclosures will be super cheap, I will be able to resell the FW800 RAID easy.

Westfoto · Dec 2, 2006, 09:25 PM

What are you storing on these drives? Large files or lots of small files? Do you need the speed or do you want the speed?

As you might know eSATA has to be access via a card on the Mac Book Pro. and depending what vintage MBP you have you might have FW800 on your computer.

I have four FW800 drives conected to my G5 Quad, very fast. I use drives that are the same size and duplicate my data. ie. what is on drive one is also on drive two and the same for 3 to 4.

I have been getting my drives from OWC - good so far. OWC: Apple Mac G4 upgrades, Laptop Batteries, Memory, Drives

mrmister · Dec 3, 2006, 04:00 PM

Just media--lots of backup files, video, audio, tons of stuff. And I definitely don't NEED the speed; I'm just thinking about future-proofing, and my current setup is a series of daisy-chained PATA FW400 drives, so I have to figure out when I should start getting SATA enclosures.

I'm planning on something with both FW800 and FW400, but the question was whether people thought it should have eSATA as well, for future-proofing, but I wasn't planning on using eSATA right now.

SciFrog · Dec 4, 2006, 12:15 PM

Should have mentionned, I will use the RAID 1 SATA enclosure as boot drive for an iMac 24''...

Mister Elf · Dec 5, 2006, 11:15 PM

RAID 1 will be slow as a boot drive...especially over FW800.

Oneota · Dec 6, 2006, 12:28 AM

If you've got a MBP and want the fastest-possible HD access, you can get eSATA ExpressCards, I think. Kind of a best-of-all-worlds scenario.

Oneota · Dec 6, 2006, 12:31 AM

Originally Posted by Mister Elf

RAID 1 will be slow as a boot drive...especially over FW800.

It shouldn't be any slower than one drive by itself, and theoretically would be quicker for disk reads.

If I remember my undergrad CS classes right, mirrored arrays can utilize both disks for reads (netting a speed boost), but since they have to write data to both disk (with a little bit of RAID-releated-overhead, etc), there's a small speed penalty for disk writes.

Since booting a machine is primarily a disk-read-intensive operation, one would think booting from a mirrored array wouldn't be all that bad.

EDIT: Just figured out you meant using it as a general-purpose boot drive, not just the act of booting itself. Whoops.

skyman · Dec 6, 2006, 12:39 AM

I have got a little brain teaser for all of your hard drive and computer geeks.

The CEO of a major corporation installs a file server in a secure bunker, environmentally controlled with RAID 5. The technical specs are just for fun.

Lets just say this file server is indestructible and will never fail (ie power, hard drives etc). So, the CEO knows his data is safe forever.

One day the IT department gets a frantic call from the CEO yelling that all his files are gone.

Question:

If this file server is indestructible, then how did this happen??

skyman · Dec 6, 2006, 12:47 AM

I like OWC but I have found that buy.com and newegg have the best prices on hard drives. I have personally bought all my hard drive from newegg and have never had any problems.

zaghahzag · Dec 6, 2006, 11:17 AM

skyman, if the drive is indestructable, then it can't exist in our universe. any data put on it would be unreadable, as you can't interact with something like what you described.

SciFrog · Dec 6, 2006, 01:53 PM

Bootable RAID 1 over FW800 should be fast enough, not that different from the internal disk. HD themselves are the limit these days, not the interface. Different story with FW400.

skyman · Dec 6, 2006, 02:41 PM

Originally Posted by zaghahzag

skyman, if the drive is indestructable, then it can't exist in our universe. any data put on it would be unreadable, as you can't interact with something like what you described.

Ok, lets just say that the drives did not fail. So, again my question is if the drives did not fail then where did the data go?

edge.it · Dec 6, 2006, 03:35 PM

go with 2 Newegg.com - HITACHI Deskstar E7K500 500GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM hitachi 7k500 500gb and a SeriTek/2ENSM2-E External Bundle for MacBook Pro & PC Notebooks firmTek eSata 2 drive enclosure with host card

Mister Elf · Dec 6, 2006, 05:27 PM

He deleted the data...

SciFrog · Dec 6, 2006, 06:36 PM

Thanks for the recommendation. But the iMac has no eSATA possibility, so FW800 it is (I know, this is the PB forum).

mduell · Dec 6, 2006, 07:39 PM

Originally Posted by skyman

I have got a little brain teaser for all of your hard drive and computer geeks.

The CEO of a major corporation installs a file server in a secure bunker, environmentally controlled with RAID 5. The technical specs are just for fun.

Lets just say this file server is indestructible and will never fail (ie power, hard drives etc). So, the CEO knows his data is safe forever.

One day the IT department gets a frantic call from the CEO yelling that all his files are gone.

Question:

If this file server is indestructible, then how did this happen??

RAID is not a backup, so you're always an rm typo away from data loss.

Oneota · Dec 7, 2006, 12:14 AM

Indeed; anyone who treats RAID 1 or RAID 5 as a backup strategy is a fool. Any IT managers who do so should be fired.

skyman · Dec 7, 2006, 01:35 AM

Originally Posted by Mister Elf

He deleted the data...

Give that man a cigar!!

skyman · Dec 7, 2006, 01:36 AM

Originally Posted by Oneota

Indeed; anyone who treats RAID 1 or RAID 5 as a backup strategy is a fool. Any IT managers who do so should be fired.

That was the whole point of the quiz!

norz · Dec 7, 2006, 08:22 AM

Originally Posted by edge.it

firmTek eSata 2 drive enclosure with host card

Except apparently you can't chain eSata drives with that card.
Check this thread for related info.

Oneota · Dec 7, 2006, 09:15 AM

Originally Posted by skyman

That was the whole point of the quiz!

Well, sorry...it wasn't much of a quiz.