Hardware or Software RAID 0? (1 Viewer)

That's pretty much it. This is for large Photoshop and TIFF images, ranging from 250MB to as much as 1.5GB each. I will back up this drive to another single drive for prevention of data loss, but I wondered if I will get faster reads/writes with hardware RAID 0 vs. Mac OS software RAID 0. Any input from those who have actually done this?


A possible RAID enclosure I am considering is this Vantec. I have a 4 bay, non-raid version of the same enclosure as a media server and I'm happy with it.

I am not a Mac person, but I would assume that the performance would be better with a hardware RAID solution over anything software-related.

Is SSD an option? LOL!

SSD is of course the best option, but if this is large scale data and it is important there are any concerns about longterm storage, you will want Hardware only RAID format, and you should consider either Thunderbolt OR a Gigabit managed NAS device over the vantec.



The Vantec device you are looking at has no noted RAM cache, so all rights will go through hardware to device.. this is going to mean your performance will not meet the potential performance of the drives.

I'm still here. Thanks for the feedback.


SSD isn't an option simply because of the volume of space I need. Absolute peak performance isn't necessary. I just want noticeably faster than what I get now. I'd also like the option to shut the drives off, since I won't actually be using them most of the time. Thunderbolt hasn't really been an option due to wanting to turn the drives off and at least at the moment I have one of my monitors driven on thunderbolt, so I can't interrupt the chain. Some of the new thunderbolt docks that have an hdmi output make this an option though. Odds are I will have to get one of those eventually anyway. THIS one perfectly suits my needs.


So, I wondered about THIS enclosure. It gives me the best options, since it has USB3 and thunderbolt. I don't see anything mentioned about RAM cache. I also don't know how big a deal that is.

I guess waiting sometimes pays off. I had experimented with software RAID 0 using some equipment I have sitting around, and the performance really didn't seem to be what it should. I wasn't finding any solutions I liked either, at least not at a price I liked.


Then I saw the refurbished version of this LaCie drive at almost 1/2 regular price. I have bought Lacie Refurbs before and they've always been an incredible value. $340 shipped for a 6TB hardware RAID drive, that's built like a tank, with 2 Thunderbolt ports and USB 3.0 is hard to beat. A quick check confirmed it does consistently give 360MB/S reads and writes.


One great feature of this drive is the Thunderbolt Idle mode. If I use this drive with thunderbolt, I need to run it in line with a monitor, but I want to be able to shut it down, because I won't be using it a lot of the time. The idle mode lets you unmount the drive and tap the power button, which spins down the drives, but keeps the thunderbolt running. Tap the power button again, and the drives mount again.


Anyway, I'd think a drive like this would be of more interest for photographers with resolution and file sizes getting bigger all the time. Some of the working files I use in Photoshop in process to large prints are 1.5 GB or more.