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Mac Pro Drive Configuration - Home User

Hi all

I'm trying to determine the 'best' drive configuration for my needs... I'm not a pro-user (although, I do use DVDSP and Motion for some DVDs I make from EyeTV) and so I don't think I want to set up a RAID or anything like that... here's a little background

I was recently having my MP operate really slowly (in terms of disk paging) because of my boot drive (a Seagate ST3500630AS at 3.AAC) was

1) Rather full - < 100GB free - lesser impact, I think
2) Some directory corruption - drive stopped booting from diskarb error

I was able to resolve the issue by wiping out the drive and it's working much better now.... but the whole thing got me thinking about my config... I had pretty much just been 'slapping' drives in as I needed drive space (I have the shipping 250GB, my old 200GB Seagat, a new ST3500630AS and a FW800 500GB Maxtor)

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I've been doing some reading and it seems that it's optimal to not have one's boot drive have anything but the OS (w VM swap files too, right) and Applications... it seems that the two best options are either a WD 'Raptor' (either 74GB or 150GB) or a Maxtor Maxline III to serve as the boot drive... I understand why the 'Raptor' is a better option (compared to my ST3500630AS - faster RPM) but why is the Maxtor (laying aside the firmware issue on the ST3500630AS)? Is it because the Maxtor's are supposed to be better at handling small files (the OS and the swap files are that, right?)? It seems to me that the 'Raptor' isn't the option I want to choose because I don't think I actually 'need' it... 74GB seems a little small to me (but perhaps not) while the 150GB seems a bit expensive when considering if I even 'need' the 'Raptor'

I'm anticipating that the Maxtor MaxLine III will be what I want to get for my boot drive... how would I want to back that up? Does it really matter if it's external? Someone had mentioned that you can do it to a disk image but then how do I boot off of that if I have an issue? Or is that just for the purpose of 'snapshotting' the system?

As I mentioned, I have the ST3500630AS and the external FW800 500GB Maxtor... they're a perfect match in size and I like having access to all of my home data on an external drive... that way if my MP dies (as my old G5s did), I can simply connect my FW drive to my old PBG4 and I'm up and running without a hitch... but I'm a little peeved about the whole firmware thing and the handicapped performance (is there anyway I can address this or should this drive be relegated to a backup status?)...

Another question - the Seagate's have the new perpendicular technology... it seems to me that people aren't that concerned about it - I thought it was supposed to be a really good thing?

What would people do in my shoes? If a solution needs more than one additional drive - I am game for ditching my smaller existing SATA drives.... Any and all suggestions would most appreciated...

Thanks!

Mac Pro 2.66, 2.0 GB RAM, 23 Apple Cinema HD Display, Mac OS X (10.4.9), EyeTV 200, Powerbook G4/667, 512 MB RAM

Posted on Apr 29, 2007 5:05 AM

Best reply

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Posted on Apr 29, 2007 8:53 AM

The only real answer to your question is to do what you want. There is no such thing as an "optimal" configuration or "best" drive because what's optimal is dependent upon what you do and need. The best drive depends upon what you want from the drive.

The Raptors are very fast but also very expensive. About twice the cost of a Maxtor Maxline Pro. However, if you feel the need for speed on your startup drive, then the Raptor is what you want. If you would rather compromise between speed, storage space, and noise then the Maxtor is a good choice. However, Seagate purchased Maxtor some time ago. The Maxtor Maxline Pro drives are being phased out (in the 300 GB and larger sizes) so as not to compete with Seagate's line of products.

You can find useful benchmark tests on hard drives at http://www.barefeats.com/ and http://www.storagereview.com/.

Personally, I would configure the system in such a way that you have sufficient storage space on one or two separate drives that can be used to backup the rest of the system. As an example, in my system I use three 300 GB Maxtor Maxline Pros (this system was setup last September.) One drive is used as my main startup drive. The other two are configured as a mirrored RAID. I use the RAID as the backup for the main startup drive. The mirrored RAID provides both backup and redundancy for added data protection. I use backup software (Synchronize! Pro X) to perform automated backups on a daily, weekly (entire Users folder,) and monthly (entire drive) basis.

Of more importance than drive configuration is maintaining your system for optimal performance:

Kappy's Personal Suggestions for OS X Maintenance

For disk repairs use Disk Utility. For situations DU cannot handle the best third-party utilities are: Disk Warrior; DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.0 is now Intel Mac compatible. TechTool Pro provides additional repair options including file repair and recovery, system diagnostics, and disk defragmentation. TechTool Pro 4.5.2 is Intel Mac compatible; Drive Genius is similar to TechTool Pro in terms of the various repair services provided. The current version, 1.5.1, is Intel Mac compatible.

OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep.

OS X automatically defrags files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive. As for virus protection there are few if any such animals affecting OS X. You can protect the computer easily using the freeware Open Source virus protection software ClamXAV. Personally I would avoid most commercial anti-virus software because of their potential for causing problems.

I would also recommend downloading the shareware utility TinkerTool System that you can use for periodic maintenance such as removing old logfiles and archives, clearing caches, etc.

For emergency repairs install the freeware utility Applejack. If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the commandline.

When you install any new system software or updates be sure to repair the hard drive and permissions beforehand. I also recommend booting into safe mode before doing system software updates.

Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):

1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial - not yet universal binary)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. PsynchX 2.1.1 and RsyncX 2.1 (Freeware)
6. Carbon Copy Cloner (Freeware - 3.0 is a Universal Binary)
7. SuperDuper! (Commercial)

The following utilities can also be used for backup, but cannot create bootable clones:

1. Backup (requires a .Mac account with Apple both to get the software and to use it.)
2. Toast
3. Impression
4. arRSync

Apple's Backup is a full backup tool capable of also backing up across multiple media such as CD/DVD. However, it cannot create bootable backups. It is primarily an "archiving" utility as are the other two.

Impression and Toast are disk image based backups, only. Particularly useful if you need to backup to CD/DVD across multiple media.

Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore.

Additional suggestions will be found in Mac Maintenance Quick Assist.

Referenced software can be found at www.versiontracker.com and www.macupdate.com.

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42 replies

Apr 29, 2007 12:47 PM in response to The hatter

That sounds like a plan of attack... thanks for the info!

Apr 29, 2007 12:48 PM in response to Justin Surpless

Didn't mean to mark answered...

Apr 29, 2007 5:14 PM in response to infinite vortex

Just out of curiosity... how would the 500GB Maxline Pro do as a boot drive?

Apr 29, 2007 5:29 PM in response to Justin Surpless

The ML Pro 500GB will do as well as the ML III 300GB. It runs a touch hotter though.

As for the business with moving your home directory to another drive, be aware that all that is required for this is to…

1) Duplicate (or create) your home directory to the new drive with special attention to maintain the correct ownership privileges
2) Edit your NetInfo home directory by editing it with NetInfo Manager

I normally recommend leaving the default home directory as is rather than messing around with symbolic links and so on. The reason is that for whatever reason, if your boot drive fails to find your data drive and directory then it will correctly boot into the original, default home directory.

One thing with doing this is that you need to take really good care of how you set up and manage your backups. Unlike a single volume setup you need to be mindful of what is pointing to where.

Apr 29, 2007 6:10 PM in response to infinite vortex

I have noticed that backing up aliases that point to other drives doesn't always work that well... always wondering what I should do differently... what do I need to do to be 'mindful' of this issue?

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Apr 29, 2007 6:43 PM in response to Justin Surpless

I use to worry about the way SuperDuper would handle an alias to point back to the original item, not use a "relative path"

I had trouble with Quicken Data files.
An alias to the Utilities folder would always point back to the original drive.

So if you wanted a perfect clone, it really wasn't as far as I could see. I wanted to boot from it, but otherwise, no problem for backup and restore.

Carbon Copy Cloner didn't cause problems with aliases, but seems like it really needs an update from 2.3, and 3.0 won't yet do a smart copy synchronize (beta after all but update due soon).

With /Users on another drive, I just drop in a system, point it in the right direction, back in business. Do a full erase and install or restore from backup and good to go. The update to Tiger let me reformat the boot drive which I like to do. Change NetInfo and voila! everything is as it should be.

I don't need to backup the system, and the system backup can be done to disk images and much smaller and faster.

As with anything, I suggest people have two backups, test their plan, make sure they have an emergency boot drive, and that their backup is bootable. And then make backups before updates or making changes.

Apr 29, 2007 7:34 PM in response to infinite vortex

I would only get the 500GB if it could function well as an all-in-one drive (i.e, a boot drive that could have my home directory on it)...

Apr 30, 2007 7:10 AM in response to Justin Surpless

I'm a little confused then. Given you already have an internal, and external, 500GB drive why aren't you using that as your "everything" drive?

Apr 30, 2007 7:17 AM in response to infinite vortex

The internal 500GB is the Seagate 7200.10... it works fine as the 'everything' drive but I am trying to get a better and faster boot drive (the Seagate is slow for small files as I understand it)... it would seemingly work better as just a data drive for my EyeTV...

The favorite of many is the MaxLine III 300GB... in order for me to use this as the boot, I'd probably want to have my home directory on another drive (because of the size)... given that you pointed out that I'd want to be 'careful' about how I link my external home directory to that drive, I started wondering how the MaxLine Pro 500GB would serve as the boot drive...

Hope that makes a little more sense?

Apr 30, 2007 7:32 AM in response to Justin Surpless

OK… right, makes more sense now.

Yes, the ML Pro 500GB will do great as your "everything" drive. I would however place it into Bay 2 as it's the coolest bay bay of them all by 3-5º. One option you may not have considered is the new Hitachi 1TB drive? Apparently it's quite the all-round screamer.

Apr 30, 2007 7:44 AM in response to infinite vortex

I had seen the new 1TB drive... but I had heard (a while ago now) that IBM drives were not doing so well... Deskstar = Deathstar?

Apr 30, 2007 7:50 AM in response to Justin Surpless

That was quite some time ago and the issue that caused the rather unfriendly name of "Deathstar" has since been rectified. I do understand and appreciate your concern though so if you can't bring yourself to take it seriously then the ML Pro 500 does give fantastic performance.

Apr 30, 2007 8:48 AM in response to infinite vortex

As long as the issue has been dealt with, I have no concern... everybody goes through a rough patch... for me, right now - the price is a bit of a stumbler...

Apr 30, 2007 9:46 AM in response to Justin Surpless

I believe that the configuration I'd like to end up with is as follows:

Maxtor Maxline III 300GB boot drive
Maxtor Maxline Pro 500GB User directory drive
Seagate 7200.10 500GB EyeTV drive (as long as this drive is not used for small files, it should be a screamer, right?)

I think I'd like to use my existing 7200.10 as a backup for the new 7200.10 EyeTV drive and the existing Maxtor FW800 drive as a backup for the MaxLine Pro User drive...

I imagine that it'd be a good thing to have the boot drive's backup as an external drive so I figure I'd have to get a new external drive for that... I'm thinking that the OWC Mercury™ Elite-AL Pro (w/ eSATA/FW800/etc) would be good for that... I know that it's an SATA drive but just want to verify that I could someday connect it via eSATA and it'd be the same deal as if it were internal (pretty sure it will be)... anyone have any feedback on these?

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The only gotcha is that this is getting kinda pricey... it'll be ~$600 (plus the RAM cost)... in all likelihood, this would more than take care of my drive needs for the foreseeable future and have a nice backup solution for all my data... but I am torn by the thought that it might be overkill... another configuration could be (an interim)

Maxtor Maxline III 300GB boot drive
Maxtor Maxline Pro 500GB User directory drive
Seagate 200GB EyeTV drive (existing)

I could partition my existing FW800 Maxtor to serve as the backup for my boot drive AND my EyeTV drive... my User drive would be backed up onto the existing 7200.10 drive... the only gotcha on this is that all of my User data is not available as an external backup... I could implement this for ~$220; is that worth saving $400? How critical would people say that it is to have that available as external? I could always try this out and if I don't like it, upgrade to the optimum configuration...

Any thoughts?

Apr 30, 2007 10:00 AM in response to Justin Surpless

The only gotcha is that this is getting kinda pricey... it'll be ~$600 (plus the RAM cost)

All I can really say to that is that you get what you pay for. Ultimately you're actually going to save money by doing the right thing up front. My advice is to do it right.

By the way, have you considered buying 2 x ML III 300GB and putting them into a RAID 0 set. That'll give you better performance as well a drive big enough for both boot and data.

Mac Pro Drive Configuration - Home User