I'd like to see how much faster my system runs if I run 2 hard drives in Raid 0. I happen to have 2 identical 250 gb drives (Western Digital 8mb IDE) that I could run off my 2.5">3.5" IDE converter on my older PPC Mini. OS X in Disk Utility seems to support this. Is there anything else I need to consider?
Raid 0 in OS X
- Thread starter RobinS
- Start date
camgangrel21
Mac Programer
Yeah just keep in mind that if one of the drives go bad you have lost all of your data not just part of it.
That is if don't have deep pockets because a RAID 0 type setup will cost out of the gate about 2,000 to get the data back from some where like drive savers.
2nd keep in mind that you are using two desktop drives that will not be able to be seated inside of the computer. By doing that you can kill the system's air flow and in the mini air flow is tops. So you may end up killing your system doing that.
You will also need to keep in mind that if your desktop hard drives are spinning only as fast as the hard drive that came with the mini you will only see at best 2x speeds over what you had. To make it really worth it you need two 10,000 RPM drives. That is why gaming PC that come RAID 0 in them will more them likely have two or more 10,000 RPM drives in them.
That is why those setups cost so damn much, most of the cost is in the RAID and the drives.
I hope that helps you out there.
But by all means fell free to hack away.
Just keep in mind as to the pit falls you might find and keep a eye on the temp inside your mac if and when you do that mod.
That is if don't have deep pockets because a RAID 0 type setup will cost out of the gate about 2,000 to get the data back from some where like drive savers.
2nd keep in mind that you are using two desktop drives that will not be able to be seated inside of the computer. By doing that you can kill the system's air flow and in the mini air flow is tops. So you may end up killing your system doing that.
You will also need to keep in mind that if your desktop hard drives are spinning only as fast as the hard drive that came with the mini you will only see at best 2x speeds over what you had. To make it really worth it you need two 10,000 RPM drives. That is why gaming PC that come RAID 0 in them will more them likely have two or more 10,000 RPM drives in them.
That is why those setups cost so damn much, most of the cost is in the RAID and the drives.
I hope that helps you out there.
But by all means fell free to hack away.
Just keep in mind as to the pit falls you might find and keep a eye on the temp inside your mac if and when you do that mod.
> Yeah just keep in mind that if one of the drives go bad you have lost all of your data not just part of it.
I backup my stuff all the time. I will choose drives (2 for now, more later) that have a good track record but aren't more than 2 years old.
>Keep in mind that you are using two desktop drives that will not be able to be seated inside of the computer.
I thought I mentioned I'm using a 250 gb full size drive now. THAT can't be seated in that silly box. I have an enclosure all designed in my mind for a sound absorbing column with the hard drives in the middle screwed to a high mass frame. Air flow will go from bottom to top. High pitched whine and other irritanting noises will be absorbed before escaping out the top or bottom.
>You will also need to keep in mind that if your desktop hard drives are spinning only as fast as the hard drive that came with the mini
I'm not using that slow 4200 rpm turtle drive. I'm using 7200 rpm full size drives.
>you will only see at best 2x speeds over what you had.
Sounds worth it. I get to use all the drive space and enjoy faster speeds. If more people were diligent about backing up, this would be far more popular.
>To make it really worth it you need two 10,000 RPM drives. That is why gaming PC that come RAID 0 in them will more them likely have two or more 10,000 RPM drives in them.
That is exactly where I'm pointing. When I get my Intel rig up and running I can try it out if people have patches for the necessary hardware. Or hopefully I can use an Intel motherboard with built on Raid and Sata2 support - then use 10k Raptors or something equivalent. That's why I was designing the enclosure. I hate high pitched whining. If the column is long enough, I should be able to rid myself of the worst the hard drive can produce. Maybe I can go 15k later too. And have 4 drives. 120 or 140 mm fans running at low voltage top and bottom would be a silent help to the airflow if it needs it.
>That is why those setups cost so much, most of the cost is in the RAID and the drives.
I don't know where the cost is now that I've analysed it. The Raid controller is built on the motherboard (in the PC world) and most motherboards support 4 Sata drives. If one is using a 200 gb drive and needs more space, getting another 200 gb drive and using them together is a little more expensive than getting a 400 gb drive selling off the 200 gb but not by much. I can't see why people don't embrace this more. Especially as hard drive seek time is supposed to be the slowest link in the chain for computer performance. I'm just learning this so if I'm overlooked something, please let me know.
>I hope that helps you out there.
But by all means fell free to hack away.
Just keep in mind as to the pit falls you might find and keep a eye on the temp inside your mac if and when you do that mod.
Inside my Mac? LOL....I wouldn't dream of doing anything in the inside of any Mac. Heat and Apple are happy bedfellows. I don't agree. Apple mandates pretty styles for their components and heat always pays a high price. I just looked at a 20" Intel iMac and noticed how hot the case was. It was idling. Just a slit 1/2" high along the back - not even at the top - to allow the hot air to escape. Imagine what happens when its actually doing something. Then I looked at a 30" Apple LCD monitor. Beautiful picture - granted. But for how long? The thing was doing nothing and was very very warm. No vents at all. Then I peeked at the new Intel Mac Pro tower. It was idling and the air coming out the back was very warm. Then the side cover was removed so I could peek inside and I noticed that the first Sata drive nearest the front gets nice ventilation from the front fan. But the others don't. The last one must cook. I use a Mini without the cover with an ATX power supply powering the DVD burner and 7200 rpm hard drive and the occasional fan (running at lower voltage). Haven't used a top on that thing for a year. I wish I could somehow rig up some ducting to channel air into the heatsink from a 120 or 140 mm fan but its so small (gotta be cute!) and that makes it challenging.
If you get hot air off something (besides the CPU), the cooling system is just not working unless its doing something very demanding. If its hot when its idling, its going to cook when its working. Someone once said, "Don't put new wine in old wineskins". In today's electronic modern world that could be, "Don't try to cool something with air that has just cooled something else". Trying to use hot air to cool something is just plain stupid.
Getting back to the Mini.....will it really work in Raid 0? Is the controller on board the Mini? Or is it just not needed?
I backup my stuff all the time. I will choose drives (2 for now, more later) that have a good track record but aren't more than 2 years old.
>Keep in mind that you are using two desktop drives that will not be able to be seated inside of the computer.
I thought I mentioned I'm using a 250 gb full size drive now. THAT can't be seated in that silly box. I have an enclosure all designed in my mind for a sound absorbing column with the hard drives in the middle screwed to a high mass frame. Air flow will go from bottom to top. High pitched whine and other irritanting noises will be absorbed before escaping out the top or bottom.
>You will also need to keep in mind that if your desktop hard drives are spinning only as fast as the hard drive that came with the mini
I'm not using that slow 4200 rpm turtle drive. I'm using 7200 rpm full size drives.
>you will only see at best 2x speeds over what you had.
Sounds worth it. I get to use all the drive space and enjoy faster speeds. If more people were diligent about backing up, this would be far more popular.
>To make it really worth it you need two 10,000 RPM drives. That is why gaming PC that come RAID 0 in them will more them likely have two or more 10,000 RPM drives in them.
That is exactly where I'm pointing. When I get my Intel rig up and running I can try it out if people have patches for the necessary hardware. Or hopefully I can use an Intel motherboard with built on Raid and Sata2 support - then use 10k Raptors or something equivalent. That's why I was designing the enclosure. I hate high pitched whining. If the column is long enough, I should be able to rid myself of the worst the hard drive can produce. Maybe I can go 15k later too. And have 4 drives. 120 or 140 mm fans running at low voltage top and bottom would be a silent help to the airflow if it needs it.
>That is why those setups cost so much, most of the cost is in the RAID and the drives.
I don't know where the cost is now that I've analysed it. The Raid controller is built on the motherboard (in the PC world) and most motherboards support 4 Sata drives. If one is using a 200 gb drive and needs more space, getting another 200 gb drive and using them together is a little more expensive than getting a 400 gb drive selling off the 200 gb but not by much. I can't see why people don't embrace this more. Especially as hard drive seek time is supposed to be the slowest link in the chain for computer performance. I'm just learning this so if I'm overlooked something, please let me know.
>I hope that helps you out there.
But by all means fell free to hack away.
Just keep in mind as to the pit falls you might find and keep a eye on the temp inside your mac if and when you do that mod.
Inside my Mac? LOL....I wouldn't dream of doing anything in the inside of any Mac. Heat and Apple are happy bedfellows. I don't agree. Apple mandates pretty styles for their components and heat always pays a high price. I just looked at a 20" Intel iMac and noticed how hot the case was. It was idling. Just a slit 1/2" high along the back - not even at the top - to allow the hot air to escape. Imagine what happens when its actually doing something. Then I looked at a 30" Apple LCD monitor. Beautiful picture - granted. But for how long? The thing was doing nothing and was very very warm. No vents at all. Then I peeked at the new Intel Mac Pro tower. It was idling and the air coming out the back was very warm. Then the side cover was removed so I could peek inside and I noticed that the first Sata drive nearest the front gets nice ventilation from the front fan. But the others don't. The last one must cook. I use a Mini without the cover with an ATX power supply powering the DVD burner and 7200 rpm hard drive and the occasional fan (running at lower voltage). Haven't used a top on that thing for a year. I wish I could somehow rig up some ducting to channel air into the heatsink from a 120 or 140 mm fan but its so small (gotta be cute!) and that makes it challenging.
If you get hot air off something (besides the CPU), the cooling system is just not working unless its doing something very demanding. If its hot when its idling, its going to cook when its working. Someone once said, "Don't put new wine in old wineskins". In today's electronic modern world that could be, "Don't try to cool something with air that has just cooled something else". Trying to use hot air to cool something is just plain stupid.
Getting back to the Mini.....will it really work in Raid 0? Is the controller on board the Mini? Or is it just not needed?
ElDiabloConCaca
U.S.D.A. Prime
There is no hardware RAID controller in the Mac mini, so you would be implementing a software RAID 0, which can actually be slower than a single drive, since you'd be using the Mac mini's processor to do all the RAID processing.
I would recommend against setting up a RAID with your mini. If you really want RAID 0/1, I would recommend a tower machine with a dedicated RAID PCI controller card.
I would recommend against setting up a RAID with your mini. If you really want RAID 0/1, I would recommend a tower machine with a dedicated RAID PCI controller card.
Keep in mind that you are using two desktop drives that will not be able to be seated inside of the computer. By doing that you can kill the system's air flow and in the mini air flow is tops. So you may end up killing your system doing that.
Just keep in mind as to the pit falls you might find and keep a eye on the temp inside your mac if and when you do that mod.[/QUOTE]
----------------
I thought I'd update and correct this. The Intel (and PPC of course) Mini's airflow is extremely POOR. Temperatures are unnecessarily high as evidenced as what happens when you pop the top off and aren't running things all crammed together in that tiny enclosure. A 2" fan has very limited cooling abilities. Plus its very noisey. Just a very bad design for both heat and noise. But that's ok! Because you can run it without the top, using a full size, full speed 7200 rpm Sata drive (500 gb is around $100 now!) and enjoy superb cooling, especially when you get rid of that toy fan Apple uses. For serious cooling one might replace the heatsink with a heatpipe one designed for high end video cards. They are about $20 on Ebay - cheap!
------------------
Here's my post on temperatures. Compare it with normal temps off the Mini. They are not even close.
http://macosx.com/forums/mac-os-x-s...7255-intel-mini-temperatures.html#post1426007
------------------
Here's some pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9433215@N03/
The neat thing is that the large fan cools the hard drive very well. Right now, with a low ambient temperature in the room the readings are frigid! Using Temperature Monitor.
First temp is celsius, second is farenheit.
CPU A heatsink 15/59
CPU A Temperature Diode 22/71
CPU Core 1 9/48
Northbridge Position 1 18/64
Northbridge Position 2 19/66
Hard drive 17/62
Without the fan on the hard drive (on the bottom of course as most heat comes off the bottom) the temperatures were about 15-20 more F. Actually the fan is just blowing on it from the side a bit.
Another thing to think about with the Mini: the bottom is composed of a heatpad to conduct heat away from the video chipset on the underside of the motherboard. Never place your Mini on a warm or insulated surface. Ideally a slam of aluminum would suffice. Actually, ideally scrap that lousy case bottom and put a heatsink on the chipset itself. Cool at source.
Just keep in mind as to the pit falls you might find and keep a eye on the temp inside your mac if and when you do that mod.[/QUOTE]
----------------
I thought I'd update and correct this. The Intel (and PPC of course) Mini's airflow is extremely POOR. Temperatures are unnecessarily high as evidenced as what happens when you pop the top off and aren't running things all crammed together in that tiny enclosure. A 2" fan has very limited cooling abilities. Plus its very noisey. Just a very bad design for both heat and noise. But that's ok! Because you can run it without the top, using a full size, full speed 7200 rpm Sata drive (500 gb is around $100 now!) and enjoy superb cooling, especially when you get rid of that toy fan Apple uses. For serious cooling one might replace the heatsink with a heatpipe one designed for high end video cards. They are about $20 on Ebay - cheap!
------------------
Here's my post on temperatures. Compare it with normal temps off the Mini. They are not even close.
http://macosx.com/forums/mac-os-x-s...7255-intel-mini-temperatures.html#post1426007
------------------
Here's some pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9433215@N03/
The neat thing is that the large fan cools the hard drive very well. Right now, with a low ambient temperature in the room the readings are frigid! Using Temperature Monitor.
First temp is celsius, second is farenheit.
CPU A heatsink 15/59
CPU A Temperature Diode 22/71
CPU Core 1 9/48
Northbridge Position 1 18/64
Northbridge Position 2 19/66
Hard drive 17/62
Without the fan on the hard drive (on the bottom of course as most heat comes off the bottom) the temperatures were about 15-20 more F. Actually the fan is just blowing on it from the side a bit.
Another thing to think about with the Mini: the bottom is composed of a heatpad to conduct heat away from the video chipset on the underside of the motherboard. Never place your Mini on a warm or insulated surface. Ideally a slam of aluminum would suffice. Actually, ideally scrap that lousy case bottom and put a heatsink on the chipset itself. Cool at source.