Best RAID for Aperture 3 and iMac i7

[sper]

<p>I'm thinking about either getting a Drobo or the this option:<br>

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEQX2KIT0GB/<br>

My question is basically will I have performance issues if I try and run my photo library over Firewire 800 and process in Aperture. My internal HD is 1TB but that will run out fast. I'd like to keep all my work in one secure RAID, but because I have an iMac I can't do eSATA, only Firewire 800. Is RAID 5 the best way to go for photo? It seems like being able to swap out drives as they go bad might be a good way to do it for the foreseeable future. I'm also concerned about the processor drain as I can't ad a RAID card to an iMac.<br>

Is firewire 800 fast enough? Or should I keep my current libraries on my internal drive and just export catalogs of what I'm not working on at the moment? My files are Nikon D700 14 bit NEFs and high resolution film scans from V700 and Nikon Coolscan V. They occasionally get weighty when I scan 4x5.<br>

Any advice here would be welcome. I'm no computer expert, but I get by. :-)</p>

[colin_mattson1]

<p>There's no processor drain using a hardware RAID enclosure; it's just a big, drive-bay-laden RAID card.</p>

<p>The bigger question is what you hope to gain by using RAID. RAID is not a backup and doesn't replace a backup—so if your goal is data security, it's not providing that (and doing so in a very cost-ineffective way). If your goal is performance, a sane RAID solution (non-0) is only going to offer modest performance gains if any significant gain.</p>

<p>What RAID's really giving you is the ability to work through a drive failure: If a single drive fails, you can theoretically continue to work with the degraded set. For an on-set or on-location computer or for photographers with very tight deadlines, that benefit often outweighs the considerable cost and complexity increases of adopting RAID. If you're working in looser timeframes and can stand the downtime to restore from backup, though, you've really got to ask yourself "Is the minimal benefit worth the costs?" For some people the answer's yes, for some people the answer's no.</p>

<p>If you choose to adopt RAID (or even just external drives), FW800 is more than fast enough for most purposes. With a theoretical top speed of 100MB/s, it's not far off from (and still often faster than) real-world performance of many drives and RAID arrays.</p>

[sper]

<p>That's interesting. What about just a plain old mirrored RAID over two drives? Would that be a good stable storage solution? How do I store my data in the long term?</p>

[richard__]

<p>While I am using a Raid 5, and it comes in handy when a single drive fails which recently happened to me; it might be more pratical to use just the Raid 1 mirroring, and then back that up daily to separate drives:</p>

<p><a href="http://westcoastimaging.blogspot.com/2009/04/systems-for-automatic-duplication.html">Systems for Automatic Duplication</a></p>

<p>I am not using Aperture yet, so I can't comment on how well it's going to work over firewire vs eSata. But eSata would be my preference because it is a much faster interface. Since the iMac doesn't appear to have an Expresscard slot either which could take an eSata adapter, it looks like you are stuck with firewire.</p>

<p> </p>

[garrison_k.]

<p><em>will I have performance issues</em><br>

<em>My internal HD is 1TB but that will run out fast.</em><br>

<em>because I have an iMac I can't do eSATA, only Firewire </em><br>

<em>I'm also concerned about the processor drain as I can't ad...</em></p>

<p>May I ask what attracted you to this machine in the first place?</p>

<p>I think you are confusing NAS with RAID? There is no point running a RAID O (for speed) and then connecting it to firewire.<br>

One TB is more than enough to store your current work and then use an external for your library of older images that you don't need as often. I'd then mirror that external once in awhile and keep it off site.</p>

 

[john_flores2]

<p>Colin, RAID is not a backup but it does offer redundancy against drive failure (except RAID 0 IIRC). So it does provide data security. But as you suggest, don't mistake it for a backup, which ideally is stored in a different location in case of fire, flood, or other acts of God.<br>

Mark, I looked into the Drobo attached to my iMac via FW800, but I read that there's a bottleneck in the Drobo controller card. It may not be debilitating for photography, but I do some video now and then, and in those situations throughput is critical. I ended up buying a Western MyBook 4Tb drive. It's a double-wide enclosure that houses two 2Tb drives that can be configured for RAID 1. It's actually sitting next to an older Western Digital 2Tb drive that houses two 1Tb drives. That one <strong>is</strong> configured RAID 1 and it holds my Lightroom catalog and photo files. It runs plenty fast, the only serious delay is that it's a green drive that spins down when not being used, so when it needs to start back up you can hear it spinning up to speed.<br>

HTH<br>

john</p>

 

[mariosforsos]

<p>I'll echo the question: what exactly are you looking for?</p>

<p>Personally, I have the same iMac and have, at the moment, two USB 2.0 1TB external drives mirroring each other. I'm using LR and my main library and all my photos reside in one of the external drives. The other drive simple mirrors that every time I shut down the machine (I use a small utility called Chronosync which does this automatically). That way I have all my work constantly on two drives so if one fails I don't even have to restore or anything - I simply point LR to the other drive and start working as if nothing happened. The only thing I need to remember is to reverse the mirroring within Chronosync before I shut down the machine...;-)))))</p>

<p>In terms of speed, I have not noticed a speed decrease compared with keeping the library on the internal drive - I'm sure there is one, but I, personally, have not been able to notice it - i.e. it has not been an issue for me (and I currently have 17k+ images on my library).</p>