RAID questions…

[Mr645]

I boot my dual 2.5 G5 from a RAID 0 array, two 160GB drives. Works great, noticably faster then the single drive. I back up regularly to a 320GB FW800 drive. Apps launch faster, the Machine boots faster, many things rely on hard drive performance and the striped array helps a lot.

Jon

[john-o]

Mr645,

1) Did you use Disk Utility, SoftRAID, or something else, to set up your RAID?

2) Are there any tips or tricks I need to know to get it set up and working on my G5?

Thanks,
John-o

[Mr645]

I used Disk Utility. My Mac came with a 160GB Seagate 7200.7 and I found a 7200.9 160GB for $50. Used SuperDuper to clone my drive to a FW drive, formatted the two 160 internals as RAID 0 w/ Disk Utility and then SuperDupered it back from the FW drive.

Drive performance went up about 80% overall

[john-o]

80%?

That's amazing; how did you come up with that number, benchmarking software or what?

[JJ]

RAID 0 treats two hard drives as one big hard drive.

Imagine filling/draining a swimming pool with one hose, then adding a second hose.

Since two paths (hoses) feed into and out of the hard drive (pool), it fills/drains faster.

The distinct disadvantage to RAID 0 is when one of the hard drives fails, you lose all of your data on the RAID 0 array, not just the data on the hard drive that failed. If you backup regularly this isn't a huge deal.

A lot of people believe the average user has no need for a RAID 0 congiguration. Only you can decide for yourself. I like it, especially with two hard drives spinning at 10,000 RPM.

John

[Mr645]

<<<80%?

That's amazing; how did you come up with that number, benchmarking software or what?>>>


I used Xbench to test the drive(s) before and fater being RAIDed together. Some functions were 125-145% faster, other measurements were much less, perhaps 15% faster. Booting the machine is much faster and apps load in 1/3 ro 1/2 the time.

80% is an estimate.

There are some specific numbers on xlr8yourmac.com Just search for Seagate, G5, SATA(onboard)


Jon