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Concatenating drives?

#1
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12/10/08 at 9:06pm
  • Joined: October 1997
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On my new Mac Pro I have two identical 750GB hard disks. According to the literature I have seen, Leopard makes it trivially easy to 'concatenate' these two drives to make a single 'logical' drive that is their combined size.

It does this without using any RAID tomfoolery as near as I can tell.
MAC OS X Leopard: Beyond the Manual - Google Book Search

I suppose this makes the two drives a single possible point of failure. But the upside is that there is a lot more continuous space available. The alternative, of course is to go buy a single 1.5 TB drive. Just curiious what folks thought about this idea.

Sam

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#2
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12/11/08 at 8:06am
  • Joined: March 2001
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Re: Concatenating drives?

Working on a big film project? ProTools? Final Cut?

Zero one of those 750s and think about what it's like to zero a 1 or 1.5tb

For basic music and photography ... K.I.S.S.

Then again, the thought of 3-4 Spinpoint Drives sitting in a stripe sounds nifty.

BTW, how's the new box? Sweet?
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#3
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12/11/08 at 11:41am
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Re: Concatenating drives?

No, I don't do video (yet, at least). But I do have over 350 gigs of Canon and Nikon DSLR Raw files and about another 100 gigs of full size final jpegs. I suppose I will go without concatenation just to be safer.

The box so far is VERY sweet. I was really worried because the box the Cinema Display came in had extensive damage on arrival but the contents do not seem affected:
08-MacPro - a set on Flickr
08-MacPro-6453 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

I really didn't need an octa box, I wanted the expandability and better video card performance of the MacPro more than the sheer number crunching of it, but it's nice to have and the UI is smooth as butter so far.

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#4
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12/11/08 at 3:25pm
  • Joined: March 2001
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Re: Concatenating drives?

I'd say break in with the 2 750s as is, and move up to a Spinpoint 1tb when needed. The image files can sit anywhere, so no need to toy with raid. Select 100 of those raw files and open in CS or Lightroom on the old computer, then try it on the Pro. Enjoy

Another good test is DXO Optics Pro if you have it - a real CPU hog. Killer app for stills.
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#5
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12/11/08 at 5:03pm
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Re: Concatenating drives?

Quote:
without using any RAID tomfoolery
There's no "R" (redundancy) in the appropriately named RAID-0 either, but concatenating or JBOD is still similarly RAID-ish, with comparative pros and cons. I would lean against it.

They're pricey, but you might consider a Drobo. You get a single large volume, which you can easily make larger, and you get protection against drive failure. Leave one 750 as a boot drive, take the other and put it in the Drobo along with other drives you have lying around. Swap out the smaller drives as you run out of space.

Use Time Machine to make backups of the boot drive.
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#6
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12/12/08 at 6:59am
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Re: Concatenating drives?

I'll probably use SuperDuper to make a backup of the boot drive to a spare USB drive, since Lightroom and Time Machine don't exactly play nicely. I'd love a Drobo but their pricing is still a bit killer. Probably down the road tho once my wallet recovers from this purchase and my new lenses.

Thanks for the input and links guys!

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#7
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12/12/08 at 7:20am
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Re: Concatenating drives?

One thing I forgot to add is I am surprised at how QUIET this system is so far. The drives are louder than the fans! I'm gonna have to run something like a prime calculator or SETI at home or some other distributed app to try to max it out and see what it's like fully cranking...

Also, will need something to really push the 3D card too =)

Blog: Navesink.net - My Flickr Stream is here - Click here to Email me - Updates at Twitter & FriendFeed
Information Technology Blog:  Infotechbuzz - Save The Alamo - Join the HTF Flickr Pool or discuss the pool here
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