Hard Drive Failure = Excuse to upgrade 2009 Mac Pro. Advice!

Okay so I wouldn't really say it was a failure but I had my stock 640 gb hd in my quad core 2009 Mac Pro go corrupt and stopped booting on me. I have a 2gb time capsule and a 2gb Synology NAT diskstation for backups so I decided to just wipe the HD clean and will restore just the files I need for now. I had an old 74gb WD raptor HD laying around so I threw ML back on there so I could at least boot the computer back up. This gives me push to upgrade a few things since I have to restore everything anyways. I bought a few basic things to start which will be here tomorrow. Here is list so far,

OCZ Technology 256GB Vertex 4
Apricorn Velocity Solo x1
WD Caviar Black 1 TB SATA III 7200 RPM 64 MB

The main use for this computer is video editing/some web and photo design I have taken this up in the last year as a hobby. I mainly work with Adobe software (Premiere Pro/After Effects/Speedgrade/lightroom etc). I have the creative cloud so I do have all of Adobe CS6 and have been learning it bit by bit. I do use Apple motion and aperture some. I shoot video with just a Canon T4i DSLR camera for now so nothing crazy.

I bought the 256 SSD for my boot and app drive and I planned on keeping my files on 2 internal WD Black 1 TB in a RAID 0 (2TB total). I still have the time capsule and disk station for now as my back up. I'll change that once I need too. I'll also just keep the 640gb and 74gb internal in case I need them.

So I think I am set for now as far as storage I can expand when I need too. I plan to just end up with 4tb internal and then move to raid enclosures down the road as I need.

I have both my graphics card and ram really holding me back right now. I have only 8gb of ram right now (2gb x 4). So should I upgrade to 24gb (8 x 3) or will 32 (8 x 4) really make that much of an impact for what I am doing? I have always been under the impression you don't gain much performance after a certain point if the software doesn't take advantage of it.

So should the RAM be my next move and is there something I should really switch up with my plan as it stands right now.

Any input would be great. Thanks

Dustin

Your setup looks good


More RAM always helps

Avoid RAID 0, just keep the drives separate. If one RAID 0 drive fails, the whole RAID array is gone, so data on both drives is toast

RAID (above zero) is best used for redundancy where you have 8 TB of drives but can use 4 TB, but safe in the knowledge that drive failure will not interrupt any critical work

As louishen says, skip Raid 0. You have four hard drive bays, SSD in one with operating system, and others as you see fit. You are correct regarding software and memory. I think 16GB would be sufficient unless you go to commercial artist/graphics expert or printer on a full time professional basis.

Graphic card boost will do the most good.

As far as the hard drives go, I ultimately thought the best set up will be SSD boot drive via PCIe to take more advantage of SATA III interface of the SSD. And then fill the four hard drive bays with 1 TB WD Black series hard drives in a raid 0 and then use an external back up of the internal raid 0 drives.

As of right now, I'll only have 2tb internal plus the 256 gb SSD so my 2tb time capsule and Synology DiskStation can hold me over for now for backups. I know having a real raid set up gives me the most protection. I compared raid 5 and 10 for my usage but want performance for the files I'm working on then once they are complete I'll move them to an external storage. I don't see a more cost effective way to achieve good read/write performance with larger hard drives sizes than a Raid 0 and 1TB black series HDs.with internal drives. I am still looking for a good solution to add Sata III to the 4 bay drives with out spending an arm and a leg.

I just tested the OCZ Vertex 4 SSD with the PCIe Apricorn Velocity Solo x1 and hit mid 300s for read/write speeds. The original 640gb boot drive was coming in around 60-80. I'll post pictures tomorrow of the read/write speeds and new set up.