Digitalopia

I am often asked about the best types of storage solutions you should use for digital photography, especially if you should look at using RAID storage on the Mac Pro. In this series of articles, I hope to explain some uses for each of the most popular RAID types, RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 5. RAID is not specific to an operating system, and equally applies to Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Whilst Mac OS X is capable of supporting RAID 1 through the RAID Utility software, only the Mac Pro provides support for more than one internal disks. You can stripe across disks connected via USB or Firewire, but the gains are minimal and it is not really worth the effort.

RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) is the use of 2 or more disks to achieve greater reliability, greater performance or greater capacity.

In this article, I will be describing RAID level 1, or Mirroring. Looking at the above definition, RAID level 1 provides greater reliability, but neither greater performance or capacity. I have previously covered RAID 0 Striping in a previous article.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am often asked about the best types of storage solutions you should use for digital photography, especially if you should look at using RAID storage on the Mac Pro. In this series of articles, I hope to explain some uses for each of the most popular RAID types, RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 5. RAID is not specific to an operating system, and equally applies to Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Whilst Mac OS X is capable of supporting RAID 0 through the Disk Utility software, only the Mac Pro provides support for more than one internal disks. You can stripe across disks connected via USB or Firewire, but the gains are minimal and it is not really worth the effort.

RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) is the use of 2 or more disks to achieve greater reliability, greater performance or greater capacity.

In this article, I will be describing RAID level 0, or Striping. Looking at the above definition, RAID level 0 provides greater performance and to a lesser extent greater capacity.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am often asked about the best types of storage a digital photographer should use, especially if they should use RAID storage. In this series of articles, I hope to explain some uses for each of the most popular RAID types, especially in the context of digital photography.

RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) is the use of 2 or more disks to achieve greater reliability, greater performance or greater capacity.

In this article, I will be describing RAID level 1, or Mirroring. Looking at the above definition, RAID level 1 provides greater reliability, but neither greater performance or capacity. I have previously covered RAID 0 Striping in a previous article.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am often asked about the best types of storage a digital photographer should use, especially if they should use RAID storage. In this series of articles, I hope to explain some uses for each of the most popular RAID types, especially in the context of digital photography.

RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) is the use of 2 or more disks to achieve greater reliability, greater performance or greater capacity.

In this article, I will be describing RAID level 0, or Striping. Looking at the above definition, RAID level 0 provides greater performance and to a lesser extent greater capacity.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you are looking for massive storage for your movies, home video’s, etc. 1 terabyte (TB) drives are the obvious choice.

When configured as a RAID 5 array they offer massive storage capacity with the capability to expand further when needed. With most hardware and software RAID solution, this can also be performed online with no loss of service or data.

1TB drives have been around for quite a while, but they have been pretty hard to get. When Hitachi and Western Digital announced their drives late last year, there was a distinct lack of availability. Now, as other manufactures and models have been released they are starting to become more widely available.

The following ExtremeTech article provides a comprehensive comparison of 7 1TB drives.

ExtremeTech comparison of 7 Terabyte dirves

I will let you read the full article for ExtremeTech’s recommendations.

At home I use the low-power ‘Green’ version of the Western Digital 1TB drives in a RAID 5 array, and I have been very happy with them. They spin down to 5400 rpm (from 7200 rpm) when idle, keeping their temperature down (however, case design and fan placement have more to do with overall cooling.)

Please note that most external 1TB hard drives actually contain 2 x 500GB drives that are striped. As discussed in RAID article, this does lower the reliability of the array.

Even though the cost-per-GB still favors the 500GB drives, the larger capacity 750GB and 1TB make more sense for large scale media storage. You need a setup that can be easily expanded but does not generate too much heat or consume too much power. Choosing between 8 x 500GB RAID or 4 x 1TB RAID, the 1TB solution offers far more flexibility. If you are thinking of upgrading our media server, I would seriously look at 1TB drives, and with the availability of lower power drives, you can actually reduce you electricity cost.