RAID 0 or JBOD?

There are a ton of posts here answering that question quite well, here for the taking if you use the search tool for a little. But JBOD stands for just a bunch of disks, which is what you already have now - two disks. JBOD usually only applies when you're talking about hooking up multiple drives to a RAID controller. The best way to set up a RAID depends on your end-goal. Some setups are for improving disk throughput. Some are for redundancy. Depends on what you're after. For my needs, I find just having a separate internal drive to function as Final Cut's rendering drive works well enough for what I do. I store my project files - graphics, clips, QT exports, aif files - on a third drive.

JBOD is a good choice for audio applications. Or maybe if your drive is too small but you don't need or want a stripped or mirror RAID.

Twice a week? just use them as independent drives.

Also, any RAID should use identical drives (same firmware even).

If you need a scratch volume for editing, stripped. Or for SD or HD video.

A JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) takes multiple drives and simply treats them as if they were one large (additive) device. You can use drives of different sizes and speeds. The overall throughput is determined by the slowest drive in the set.

RAIDs (Redundant Array of Inexpensive [or Independent] Disks)

A "Striped" RAID consists of mutliple drives or multiple volumes on multiple drives that are of equal size. If you combine two drives of unequal size the RAID's size will be determined by the smallest drive. For example, if you combine a 500 GB drive with a 250 GB drive in a two-drive striped RAID the total size of the RAID will be 500 GBs (250 GBs of the larger drive combined with the smaller drive.) A striped RAID actually writes a fraction of the data to each drive. This results in a multiple effect on throughput. A four drive striped RAID may actually be close to four times faster than the slowest drive in the set.

Striped RAIDs provide no data redundancy. If one of the drives in the RAID becomes damaged it's possible to lose all the data on the RAID. Hence, backup is essential to provide data redundancy.

A "Mirrored" RAID combines two drives or volumes of equal size. Data written to one drive is instantaneously "mirrored" on the second drive. This type of RAID is slower than a single drive (data must be written twice) but provides data redundancy. Of course any data corruption on one of the drives will be instantly mirrored on the other drive.

In an enterprise or large server setting a striped RAID may be configured to provide large amounts of fast access storage. A second striped RAID of equal configuration would then be used to act as a mirror providing data redundancy.

For most small home and business uses there's little need for RAIDs unless you have unusually large data storage requirements. RAIDs should not be used as startup volumes.

For more on the topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundantarray_of_independentdisks.



Why reward points?(Quoted from Discussions Terms of Use.)
The reward system helps to increase community participation. When a community member gives you (or another member) a reward for providing helpful advice or a solution to their question, your accumulated points will increase your status level within the community.
Members may reward you with 5 points if they deem that your reply is helpful and 10 points if you post a solution to their issue. Likewise, when you mark a reply as Helpful or Solved in your own created topic, you will be awarding the respondent with the same point values.

Anything is 'dangerous' some days. Just applying or installing updates and software. Which is why backups are essential. Rotate two for daily backups, another for weekly, and keep a clean system handy somewhere. And make sure you have a drive for emergencies for repairs and such.

Why one volume? Ease managing files and data so you don't have to worry where or what volume to use for something? One drive is too small?

Try using one drive and then use SuperDuper to back that up to the 2nd drive 'as needed.'

The only way to really learn and know, is to get on the bike and ride it.

What codec are you editing in? DV? HDV? Uncompressed 8-bit? etc...

I have 2 500GB drives I striped in a RAID 0 set for my scratch disk. Put all your captured media and renders there, as you don't really care if that's lost (you can always recapture).

Just remember to backup your project files and anything you can't recapture from tapes.

One other thing you want to consider in your reading were all the people who had issues with systems with RAID setups (like myself). EFI updates don't install always (YMMV). When I updated fom 10.4.7 to 10.4.8 I got a kernel panic on reboot. Had to boot to a non-raid drive and install 10.4.8 to the raid drive for it to work.

I just seems like the RAID configurations aren't tested very well in the Apple labs before they released this stuff.

NOTE: I'm talking about a raid volume as your boot disk!

In the end I went back to a single boot disk and got an external NAS (ReadyNAS NV+) which I store large files and backup my single boot disk to (and is raided using their X-Raid variation). I also share the large files with my wife so a NAS was appropriate for me as the cost is greater. Of course, I still need to back that thing up...

The lesson also from the reading is that raid != backup. You raid for speed (like raid-0) or single drive failure (raid-1) or both (raid 0+1). Raid won't save you from accidental erasure or corruption. A backup strategy should be key to whatever you plan. It could be as simple as single boot disk for OS, 2 raid-0 disks for speed access to files (like if you work with big files), a 1 disk for backups of the raid-0 volume (the other stuff you can reinstall from cd/dvds if you had to).

Good luck with whatever you pick!

Steve

Mac Pro 2.66, 1GB RAM, 160G HD Mac OS X (10.4.8)