RAID 0

Post by **Actor** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 12:34 am

Given:

An iMac, 512 Mbytes RAM, 600 Hrz, 40 Gig HD, 4-5 years old.

No bays for additional internal drives.

Required:

RAID 0 for WorkPrinter capture.

You are supposed to be able to achieve this using two firewire drives and some sort of disk configuring software that came with the iMac. Disk manager or some such.

Anyone ever do this?

Post by **MovieStuff** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 12:43 am

Generally speaking I do not know anyone that has made a firewire Raid work for this application, whether on a Mac or PC. The only config that I know works for sure are internal drives in a Raid-0 array.

I know. This does nothing to help you at all other than maybe prevent you from buying firewire drives unnecessarily (assuming that you haven't already).

Roger

Post by **gianni1** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 1:17 am

Just put this url into my del.icio.us a few days ago, about:

"HowTo: Set up a RAID mirror under OS X for the ultimate hard drive backup"

http://www.frozennorth.org/C2011481421/E20060221212020/

I've had my eyes on a firewire 800 or USB2 external drive for a capture device and maybe fast backup device.

Thinking about it, I've got an old iMac like that, is only's gotz 400 firewire.. it works fine capturing mini dv stuff as long as the small hard disk is empty with just the necessary stuff.... I use an external disk for interesting software, backups and external storage...

Gianni

Post by **zaefod** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 3:44 am

[quote="gianni1"]Just put this url into my del.icio.us a few days ago, about:

"HowTo: Set up a RAID mirror under OS X for the ultimate hard drive backup"

http://www.frozennorth.org/C2011481421/E20060221212020/

the advice they give on the above provided link is incorrect. RAID 0 has no redundancy and is meant to provide higher data through put at the risk of having no back up. If one drive fails all the data is lost. Exactly the opposite of what is stated in the link.

Are you trying to hook up a RAID to a CRT style IMac? If so, it can not be done. The model has no PCI expansion slots to put a SCSI or SATA card into, either of which you will need for a RAID. I am assuming that you want to cut either SD or HD material. Check out http://www.macgurus.com for mac friendly RAID solutions at a good price. Also do a search on http://www.lafcpug.org for an article about RAIDs, very informative.

But what I am hearing from your specs is that you need another machine. An older iMac is fine for offline, but not online.

Good luck

chris

Post by **Actor** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 6:00 am

MovieStuff wrote:I know. This does nothing to help you at all other than maybe prevent you from buying firewire drives unnecessarily.

You can never lube your shaft too much.
There's no such thing as too much horsepower.
You can never have too many firewire drives.

Post by **Actor** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 6:21 am

Perhaps something like this.

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.h ... SQoduEUvCw

Although I really don't want to spend that kind of money.

Looks like the obvious solution is to switch back to PC. Hope that doesn't start another Mac vs. PC war. :roll:

Post by **Rachel Oliver** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 11:42 am

Hi;

I can't see any reason why a newer Mac and firewire 800 raid 0 drive would not work, they are super fast but maybe an older mac and firewire 400 could be a tad slow? If it was an older G5 powermac you could add some internal storage as raid 0 and it would be fine but old Imacs are very non expandable it seems...

Olly

Post by **zaefod** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 1:27 pm

Actor wrote:Perhaps something like this.

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.h ... SQoduEUvCw

Although I really don't want to spend that kind of money.

Looks like the obvious solution is to switch back to PC. Hope that doesn't start another Mac vs. PC war. :roll:

What are you trying to cut? Uncompressed material? SD or HD? In any case, if you want to use a RAID in RAID 0 configuration, you will need a computer with room inside it to either: put the raid in there or have the expansion card for an external RAID solution. Either way you seem to need a different machine. Mac or PC, doesn't matter.

Post by **Lurid Cinema** » Fri Nov 17, 2006 10:49 pm

I just built a totally sweet PC machine w/ RAID 0

1.5 TB Raid 0 ( 2-750gb HDD's )
200gb system drive
200gb Data drive
400gb Music drive

2gb memory
Intel Core 2 Duo CPU

IT ROCKS for HDV capture & editing.

I went w/ a PC cause I have Sony Vegas and just got a Sony HDR-HC3 Camcorder. Now I need to learn about Hi-Def Telecine of R8 film and see about making them work together.

Peace,
Eugene