OS X & IDE RAID Configuration (Working Tutorial)

[legacyb4]

I'd like to get some feedback on success/failure stories for people using OS X built-in RAID.

I've recently salvaged my pair of IBM 60GB's from my PC and wanted to see what the techies thought would be the best way to lay them out for OS X RAID would be without having to spend additional money on more add-in PCI cards, etc. The goal here is data security/redundancy over total performance.

Configuration #1

Primary IDE bus: Boot drive (M) | 60 GB drive #1 (S)
Secondary IDE bus: DVD/CD-R (M) | 60 GB drive #2 (S)

Configuration #2

Primary IDE bus: 60 GB drive #1 (M) | 60 GB drive #2 (S)
Secondary IDE bus: Boot drive (M) | DVD/CD-R (S)

a) Is it better to keep the RAID on a single bus or let it cross between the primary & secondary buses?

b) What would be the impact by having the boot drive on the same bus as the DVD/CD-R?

Cheers.

 

[scruffy]

For RAID performance, it would almost certainly be better to split the RAID over the two buses.

I don't know anythign about how happily the boot HD and DVD drives would share a bus, though.

 

[legacyb4]

Interesting. My first guess would be that both drives on a single bus would have been better.

I've been running a single drive on the secondary IDE bus along with my DVD/CD-R and haven't had problems yet but I use it primarily as data storage so I never really noticed any speed issues.

One issue I've been reading up on though, is OS X RAID's inability to partition the RAID into smaller partitions; I guess it's not quite as far along in development as Windows 2000 Server's "dynamic disk" setup where you can RAID specific partitions and/or whole drives as you wish. This could be a bit of a bummer since it was nice being able to erase a partition set aside for scratch/dev work clean (without formatting) and starting over. With a 60G RAID, that will be a bit more difficult to do especially if a quarter or more of the drive is filled with data...

Also, I've seen posts about not being able to recognize the RAID when booting from OS 9.x; how about booting Classic *off* the RAID partition? Anyone having luck/issues with that?

Cheers.

Originally posted by scruffy
For RAID performance, it would almost certainly be better to split the RAID over the two buses.

I don't know anythign about how happily the boot HD and DVD drives would share a bus, though.

 

[legacyb4]

Well, to make a long story short, due to lack of ability to split partitions when RAIDing, I decided to go with multiple partitions on both drives on both buses and using a backup program (tested Retrospect Express and liked how it worked). One nice thing about backup as opposed to pure live data redundancy is that you can roll back to an accidentally deleted file pretty easily...

Cheers.

Originally posted by legacyb4
Interesting. My first guess would be that both drives on a single bus would have been better.

I've been running a single drive on the secondary IDE bus along with my DVD/CD-R and haven't had problems yet but I use it primarily as data storage so I never really noticed any speed issues.

One issue I've been reading up on though, is OS X RAID's inability to partition the RAID into smaller partitions; I guess it's not quite as far along in development as Windows 2000 Server's "dynamic disk" setup where you can RAID specific partitions and/or whole drives as you wish. This could be a bit of a bummer since it was nice being able to erase a partition set aside for scratch/dev work clean (without formatting) and starting over. With a 60G RAID, that will be a bit more difficult to do especially if a quarter or more of the drive is filled with data...

Also, I've seen posts about not being able to recognize the RAID when booting from OS 9.x; how about booting Classic *off* the RAID partition? Anyone having luck/issues with that?

Cheers.