Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

silverlight68 · Feb 5, 2008, 06:52 PM

Good evening everybody, this is my first time posting and I really need some advice on how to haul the most out of this machine of mine.
Back in August '07, I bought a MacPro 3.0 Ghz 8 core. I ordered it with 4 gig ram, and one 250 gig hard drive for booting/OS X. Subsequently I added two 500 Gb and one 750 Gb WD SATA II Caviars for storage and back-up. As of yet I have not added any extra RAM modules, but am planning on doing so.

This is the deal: I am a photographer and shoot reasonably high volumes of images in RAW and all of those images need to be stored and at some point batch processed. I have about a whole seasons worth of work backed-up onto the 750Gb drive with about 150 Gb left over. I also want to start with doing some video editing (I have a ATY,RadeonX1900 video card with 512 mb vram). For software I have (among various other programs) Photoshop CS3, InDesign, ILife 08, ITunes and Final Cut Studio II is on the way... should arrive sometime at the end of this week. I'm concerned that the boot drive is filling up too quickly and that it would be better to replace the existing boot drive asap with a bigger one. One of the reasons for wanting to do this is to start off with a clean installation of Tiger from the original installation disks. I should have re-installed Tiger as soon as I opened the box when the computer first came in but I didn't know any better. I have been experiencing some performance problems with Bridge and have installed/uninstalled Photoshop several times to get around it but I think it's done more harm than good. I find in general that this machine is often sluggish to respond to opening folders, selecting items, or starting apps. Then I get that multi-colored, spinning disk icon thingy and i have to wait a second before something further happens. Not exactly what I had expected from a world-class "8 core"!

This has led me to a number of issues.

1. Replacing the boot drive: What do I need to know about replacing the boot drive? A PC expert friend of mine asked about whether I had the drivers for ex. the video card or whatever else is attached to the motherboard. How does this work in a Mac? Do the necessary drivers get automatically installed with OS X, or do I need to go after them myself? Where? How? Or is it better to let Apple take care of the installation? Seems this isn't necessary but I'm just not sure. I've already bought a WD 500 GB SATA II Caviar for this task but I'm starting to wonder if this was the best course of action.

2. Based on the above information, does anyone have any suggestions as to what would be the best way to go concerning hard disk size (is SATA II better/faster than SATA in this case?). I saw the other threads where the raptors were mentioned, but I'm afraid these are much too small for my needs. And what would be the best way to configure the set-up (performance wise!) with regards to scratch disk, storage and back-up? I only have room for 4 internal drives, as I have two superdrives in the computer already.

3. On my "work" drive, the one that has my assignments on it (not the back-up!) that I work on daily, I have each assignment (roughly 30 assignments altogether) in a folder. If I open that folder in Bridge, then there could easily be more than 13 Gb of data in that folder. What sort of demands does this place on my RAM requirements, and what demands will Final Cut Studio II place on my RAM requirements, as of this moment I only have 4 Gb and realize that I will need more, but then how much more would that need to be in order to be comfortable?

$. I've also read about RAID set-ups but I know pretty much nothing about how that works. Seems to me you need a special RAID card in your Mac in order to make use of such a set-up. Any info or suggestions here?

Any/all suggestions and tips will be very, VERY much appreciated. I'm not going to do anything with hard disks or maonkeying with my system until I hear back from someone who has some experience. Thank-you very much in advance!

SierraDragon · Feb 5, 2008, 08:24 PM

Much of this is discussed in several other threads, especially:
http://forums.macnn.com/65/mac-pro-a...-2008-mac-pro/

RAM, add 4x2 or 2x4 GB for 10 GB total - - or more is better.

8800GT card for Aperture and/or Bridge (little effect on Photoshop), best to add it via third party purchase then sell the stock Apple card.

RAM and hard drives from:
Find the latest Performance Upgrades, Firewire and USB Hard Drives, SATA, Memory, Laptop Battery, and more at OWC

-Allen Wicks

mduell · Feb 5, 2008, 08:31 PM

1. The drivers are all on the OS X install disk that came with your Mac. Swapping the hard drives is easy.

2. SATA II is a committee, not a drive specification, and doesn't really have any meaning in this context. Determining the best setup for you is going to require a lot more information (see the epic threads SierraDragon and I have had over the past few months), but buying 1TB drives is probably part of the solution.

3. Another 2x2GB would be the minimum, 4x2 preferred. Going above that gets a bit more pricey.

4. RAID does not require a hardware card, but works better with it. The determination whether or not to use RAID and to use software or hardware is part of the discussion mentioned above.

Memory from here, hard drives from here.

cube-dude · Feb 6, 2008, 10:18 PM

Originally Posted by silverlight68

I've also read about RAID set-ups but I know pretty much nothing about how that works. Seems to me you need a special RAID card in your Mac in order to make use of such a set-up. Any info or suggestions here?

Welcome to MacNN Forums.

Please read my first and final RAID software experience here before making your final decision.

SierraDragon · Feb 6, 2008, 11:46 PM

If you go the RAID software route SoftRAID seems a solid solution.

-Allen Wicks

silverlight68 · Feb 19, 2008, 05:25 AM

Hello Again and thanks so much for all of your help and information. I've been kind of hanging back and shuffling through the rest of the forum in an effort to do my homework before going any further.

SierraDragon had proposed in his last post Feb 7 that the SoftRAID solution would be a good option... I think that would work very well for me. Thanks BTW for that tip! I had seen some external Raid solutions an the OWC site and think that I might go that route.

The only question I have at this time is regarding the configuring of the hard disk set-up in relation to the scratch disk. In my Mac Pro I have room for 4 hard disks. I keep seeing that disc 2 should be used for scratch.... okay then probably a real DUMB question.... but should this be used ONLY for scratch without storing anything else on it? How big a scratch disk do I need then if I'm working with PSCS3 and Final Cut Studio 2?

Oh, and one more question: doe anyone have any advice for purchasing memory from OWC, as I see that they have the Netlist certified memory modules and then the less expensive, Apple qualified memory. Does it make a difference in the practical sense which type you buy?

Thanks again for all your support!

bearcatrp · Feb 19, 2008, 09:10 AM

I use the netlist certified in my mac pro. I have heard others had no problems with the less expensive ones. OWC has a real good return policy so try the cheaper ones and if you start experiencing problems, return them and get the other ones. I would suggest a minimum of 8GB of ram for what your doing. Check your page ins/outs after doing some work and see if your page outs are high. If more than 10% of your page ins, then its time to bump up the memory. I use FCE and occationaly get page outs but not often.

silverlight68 · Feb 19, 2008, 10:48 AM

Eh..... :oP

How can I see or check my page in's and out's?

Anyone???

mduell · Feb 19, 2008, 12:20 PM

Originally Posted by silverlight68

The only question I have at this time is regarding the configuring of the hard disk set-up in relation to the scratch disk. In my Mac Pro I have room for 4 hard disks. I keep seeing that disc 2 should be used for scratch.... okay then probably a real DUMB question.... but should this be used ONLY for scratch without storing anything else on it? How big a scratch disk do I need then if I'm working with PSCS3 and Final Cut Studio 2?

Yes, the scratch disk should be otherwise empty. 150GB Western Digital Raptor is a good choice for a scratch disk.

Originally Posted by silverlight68

Oh, and one more question: doe anyone have any advice for purchasing memory from OWC, as I see that they have the Netlist certified memory modules and then the less expensive, Apple qualified memory. Does it make a difference in the practical sense which type you buy?

Either is fine; last I heard (a week or so ago) they still aren't shipping the Netlist certified memory.

Originally Posted by silverlight68

How can I see or check my page in's and out's?

Activity Monitor, memory tab.

bearcatrp · Feb 19, 2008, 01:56 PM

He has the 2007 mac pro, not the 2008 model. They are shipping for the older ones.

SierraDragon · Feb 21, 2008, 04:14 PM

Originally Posted by silverlight68

doe anyone have any advice for purchasing memory from OWC, as I see that they have the Netlist certified memory modules and then the less expensive, Apple qualified memory. Does it make a difference in the practical sense which type you buy?

The OWC rep says no significant difference and I believe him.

-Allen Wicks