handling drives
This is how my 2 x 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Xeon Mac Pro is set up right now. I spend most days in many of the CS3 Production Premium programs and I am not getting the performance that I think I should be getting.
Does this RAID setup sound like trouble? My IT dept. needs to have the system on a separate partition or HD, and at the time I set this up I didn't have an external backup option. Now I have access to a server for backups.
I'm thinking now that I should have 1 of my 4 drives as the system drive and RAID 0 the other three. IT doesn't want to spend all day on my computer unless this is going to make a difference though so I'm asking around for advice from other users.
What do you guys think.
I think you have a situation that requires a little thought here.
There are several scenarios and being from the IT world myself, I understand why they think
having your OS in a separate partition or drive is useful. You didnt mention what type of back
ups are going to the network server.
If they are doing a real back up that can be totally restored (an image) of your system then there
is no need to isolate the Operating System. In fact, if their notion is to "over install" an OS if your
system gets corrupted is their motive - then you would need to re-install your apps as well as
references would be lost (plists, settings etc). Alternatively they may install the OS then restore
the other locations from your drive(s) and overlay the references/configurations. This is important
and reflects on how you want to set up your system.
A conservative approach for speed -
1) remove one drive and replace with a 1.5 tb drive.
2) raid 3 drives and put everything on them.
3) use the internal 1.5 tb drive as a clone of your raid system (backup local)
4) boot to the 1.5 tb at appropriate times (I'll explain in a moment)
5) Make sure to configure your CS3 apps. I.e. scratch file size, history settings etc.
6) Keeping your drive(s) frag free.
Of the latter, when working with media files its very easy to frag your drive. There are a few
things you can do to keep your system running fast.
1) Raid set up - there is an advance option for block size ranging from 32k to 256k.
If you really work with large files, you will want 128 or 256k. If you work with a lot
of large and small files, then 128k is a good bet.
2) How to clean up your fragged system. Fragged files can take up lots of space, prevent files from
being written contiguously etc. This is just the nature of using large files and its more about maint
than prevention at this point.
Option a) use a file defrag tool. While OSX does provide some cleaning its not really efficient for your
purposes. Tools like iDefrag do a much better job of cleaning up the drives and have a couple
of nice optimizing set ups. You can run this tool from the Raid drive itself in a quick mode or,
boot into the non raid drive and defrag the raid drive volume. This approach works well.
Option b) Perhaps I should have stated before, you will need some type of backup/clone software to
back up the raid volume (3drives) to the 1.5 tb drive. There are several out there. While
Retrospect is a high end one its cumbersome. I believe SuperDuper is far less expensive and
ideal for your needs. What you can do is simply Back up your entire Raid to the 1.5 TB drive,
then boot into the 1.5 which is an exact match. If you can boot up successfully and all seems
as it should, reverse the process. - Back up the 1.5 drive onto the Raid. The wiping of your
raid drive and installing of the 1.5 drive "data" will remove pretty much all the fragged files
akin to a clean install (actually better).
Recap -
3 Drive Raid, 1 unraided drive = to the size of the Raid (1.5 tb).
If you want a partition for the OS, do it after creating the Raid.
Optimize your application(s)
Make sure both RAM and Vid Card are the right fit for your purposes
Keep the Raid volume "clean" with some regular maint (Defrag etc.)
Btw, I have a similar system and do photoshop mostly.
Quad 2.66 Mac Pro w/ 9 gigs RAM, ATI 1900 vid card
3 drives in raid, 1 drive "back up and EFI update control"
Use both a back up software and a good defrag tool.
My system seems to run pretty fast. My only "hit" is that
I use VMware Fusion and keeping that single giant file of
Windows is a pain. VMWare did offer a config to break up
that giant file into 2 gig pieces. I may try that soon <G>
Hope this is of help.
Phrehdd