Just received my Mac Pro and registered here this morning to ask a few ?s about had drives. I have been reading about hard drives all over the place, including a search here, and I still don't know enough to set up my Mac Pro hard drives optimally for home video and photography work (mainly Photoshop, Capture one, Final Cut Express, and iLife). Here are a some questions I have. If you can answer even one, please reply.
1) I have read several posts by people who are using a fast drive as a boot disk. I was thinking of getting a Raptor for this purpose. If I make my fastest drive in the Mac Pro a boot drive, won't everything else (like my Applications and Home folders) automatically go there as well?
2) If I do dedicate a fast drive as a boot drive, can it also serve as a scratch disk, or will this significantly degrade performance?
2b) Is a boot drive the same as an OS drive?
3) I know the Mac Pro currently doesn't support hardware RAID internally, but can I buy an external FW800 hardware RAID 0 enclosure? Would this give me significant performance gains (as a scratch disk) compared to a single internal fast drive or two software striped internal fast drives?
4) How much difference does 8MB vs 16MB cache make?
As you may know, the Mac Pro has four internal HD bays. Currently I have a 320GB 7,200 rpm WD drive with 16MB cache as my boot/storage drive and a 250GB 7,200 rpm WD drive with 8MB cache as my Windows drive (Boot Camp). The latter came with the Mac Pro. I am planning to buy a couple smaller, faster internal drives or an external FW 800 enclosure and am not sure how best to go about it. No specific budget, but less is more. I definitely don't want to spring for a SCSI solution. Specific suggestions regarding which HDs to buy would also be appreciated. I was thinking of buying a couple 74GB Raptors.
Thanks in advance for your advice.
1) I have read several posts by people who are using a fast drive as a boot disk. I was thinking of getting a Raptor for this purpose. If I make my fastest drive in the Mac Pro a boot drive, won't everything else (like my Applications and Home folders) automatically go there as well?
2) If I do dedicate a fast drive as a boot drive, can it also serve as a scratch disk, or will this significantly degrade performance?
2b) Is a boot drive the same as an OS drive?
3) I know the Mac Pro currently doesn't support hardware RAID internally, but can I buy an external FW800 hardware RAID 0 enclosure? Would this give me significant performance gains (as a scratch disk) compared to a single internal fast drive or two software striped internal fast drives?
4) How much difference does 8MB vs 16MB cache make?
As you may know, the Mac Pro has four internal HD bays. Currently I have a 320GB 7,200 rpm WD drive with 16MB cache as my boot/storage drive and a 250GB 7,200 rpm WD drive with 8MB cache as my Windows drive (Boot Camp). The latter came with the Mac Pro. I am planning to buy a couple smaller, faster internal drives or an external FW 800 enclosure and am not sure how best to go about it. No specific budget, but less is more. I definitely don't want to spring for a SCSI solution. Specific suggestions regarding which HDs to buy would also be appreciated. I was thinking of buying a couple 74GB Raptors.
Thanks in advance for your advice.
Facebook
Twitter