[kkneisley]

Hey all,

I'm waiting (impatiently) for my G4 to arrive, along with a Miles2 and twin 18GB Cheetahs purchased separately. With this "idle" time, I am trying to figure the best way to set up the RAID, and where to install the system and apps. The machine will also have the stock 10GB ata drive in it.

I was planning to stripe (level 0) a scratch partition (1/3), stripe another partition (1/3) for workspace, and mirror (level 1) the remainder for critical files.

Any suggestions from the trenches?

I really don't want to deal with redoing this 5 times to get it right.

Thanks!

[Don Foy]

I deal with RAID on a daily basis as the computer guy at a small daily newspaper, and sometimes you don't get it right the first time. The only way to tell is to do it, use it and see if it fits your needs.

It sounds like you've thought this out and there appears to be nothing wrong with what you've stated, but Only you will be able to tell that when you've used it a couple of weeks.

[kkneisley]

Thanks Don, I have been thinking long and hard about this. I'm fairly certain that I will be partitioning the drives as stated give or take a few gigs. That isn't the real issue.

Let me clarify my main question for the group:

Where should I install the apps and system for the best performance?

Again, I am interested in how others are doing it and why.

[drewman]

You can't boot from a RAID even if it is just mirrored because the drivers don't initialize early enough in the boot process. Unless you have a hardware based RAID, then the RAID just looks like a hard drive to the Mac.

So, you'll have to boot from IDE drive. I would put my applications there as well since the difference in launch times would be minimal and leaves your fast RAID open for your data.

My .02

drewman

[kkneisley]

Originally posted by drewman:
So, you'll have to boot from IDE drive. I would put my applications there as well since the difference in launch times would be minimal and leaves your fast RAID open for your data.

Point on the boot from RAID, but rumor has it SoftRAID is working on it. If that happens, that just opens the door again.

It's not the launch times (a few seconds doesn't matter), but some apps use a root scratch. Acrobat Distiller is one off the top of my head. Not sure of others. Maybe someone can enlighten?

[Paul Huang]

It's a good idea to have a system drive ASIDE from the RAID anyway. Remus is having a file corruption problem if you install applications on the RAID. RAID should be reserved strictly for data storage, NOT operating system or applications.

It's just plain foolish to do it any other way.

[drewman]

Get off of Remus if at all possible if you are running on a PowerPC system.

Remus still uses 68k code only and the emulation really brings down performance.

drewman

[slboett]

Most Adobe apps allow you to specify "scratch disks" as do apps like Final Cut Pro.
I have tested launching apps from the RAID, but not a BIG difference. I load my apps on the boot drive and specify the RAID volume as the "scratch drive" for all of the apps. Works well. SoftRAID also has an option for "Photoshop Acceleration" which I use.
You can't boot a G3/G4 from a RAID as of now.
If you stripe your drives, make SURE you backup daily or you will lose your data of one of the drives fails!

Scott

[kkneisley]

Thanks to everyone who contributed. I think I have a better idea on what to do. I believe that Don Foy said it best, "The only way to tell is to do it, use it and see if it fits your needs."

No real hard and fast rules, except where to keep the System.

For the record, I will be using SoftRAID with this, as many highly recommend. I read the manual (gasp) from their site, and it sounds as if the reviews correlate with the product. It also seems very MAC FRIENDLY.

Can't say that much anymore! Times have changed in the ten years I've been on a Mac.

Thanks again,

Keith

p.s. - I'll keep a watch here for awhile longer, even after I get this beast running.

I have to set up a RAID for a new OSX file server. Do i follow the same rules?