How do i set up RAID?

I understand RAID is basically getting more than 1 Hard drive into your MAC so that FCP can capture footage and edit video without errors such as dropped frames.

I understand how to install more hard drives to my machine.

But how do i get RAID goin?

What do i need? Step by step?

All depends on the MAC! Several different ways when used in a G4 vs a G5.

1) With G4, you can install up to 4 internal drives and use 2 - 3 of them with Apple Software RAID. In a G4 you would need a PCI card (SATA or ATA) and drives larger that 120 GB, are not supported.

2) G5, you can install 2 drives natively, and with a mounting bracket, 5 drives total inside the G5. You also need a SATA PCI-X card or PCIe card in the dual core MAC's.

The Apple Soft RAID is good but delicately unstable when it comes to updating your operating system and should be considered temporary storage ONLY!

A RAID is simply a group of hard drives working together to increase the bandwidth of data transfer to and from the drives.

Drives should be of the same size and type.

A basic RAID (redund array of inexpensive disks) is called a RAID 0 or striping.
This would distribute data across all drives in the raid at once.
This gives quick transfer rates but no redundancy. You could use this for maximum storage but remember you have no back up so if one drive fails ALL data is lost.

RAID 1 is also called mirroring. Your capacity is halved but you get a copy of all data. Write speed is also a bit slower.

RAID 5 requires a minimum of 3 drives. In the case of 3 drives parity data is written to one of the drives and full data to the other 2. This allows for more data storage than RAID 1

The RAID controller can be software or hardware, the sofware RAID can be unstable if you update your OS but I would never recommend that you do that in the middle of a project. A hardware raid controller card can be used if you prefer.

There are other RAID configurations but these are probably the most common.

Sorry guys i'll try to be a bit more specific.

I plan on acquiring just 1 more Serial ATA hard drive from Apple (Apple Drive Module - 80GB Serial ATA) , to add into my G5 Quad core.

So im going to also have to buy a card? Apple Fibre Channel PCI-X Card? To make RAID work?


surely the card is only necessary if i get one of those huge triple hard drive Promax type drives no?

Not sure what the specs of your quad core are, but if it comes with one drive and only has the internal cabling for one more, then you cant really do a raid without a card and a third drive. The System drive shouldn't be part of a raid. So you will need to buy at least 2 more drives to make a Raid 0 and 3 more to make a raid 5. Also you will need a PCIe card not PCIx. And 80 GB is not very much storage when it comes to video. What sort of video editing will you be doing? DV, HDV, SD, HD, DVCPro HD? You may not need a Raid at all, maybe just another SATA Drive inside will be enough

It's kinda weird. Apparently each drive can be configured to have a capacity of 80 to 250 gb, the names are misleading.. Apple calls this particular hard drive (Apple Drive Module - 80GB Serial ATA) and another one (Apple Drive Module ? 74GB Serial ATA), among the tech jargon, i can only disern that the 80 gb one works at 7200 rpm and the 74 gb one works at 10,000 rpm.

My work involves short less than 1 minute commercials as well as video shoots like weddings, parties (2 hours of footage), though mostly short stuff. So far it's all in DV, though i want to work in HDV as you get better picture quality.

Ok new stuff I know about raid now.. I need at least 2 more drives (which my G5 has spare capacity for). And i also need the more expensive PCIe (Fibre Channel PCI Express Card) card instead of (Apple Fibre Channel PCI-X Card). Why can't i use the cheaper PCI X card?


Also according to this
[www.asia.apple.com]

(at the bottom).. the G5 PCI slots are not compatible with PCI or PCI-X expansion cards.

This just makes setting up a raid all the more confusing.

Im unsure if I need to set up a raid, or do i simply just installl another hard drive (without raid) to solve my problem of capture issues with FCP and dropped frames during post production work.

Alright. Now i just found out that perhaps What i really need for my problem is "Striping" and not RaID... Although Striping is apparently Raid 0 lol.

Ok Charles,
Working in DV or HDV you DO NOT need a Raid. You could get one if you want but it is not necessary unless working with uncompressed SD or HD. If you choose to set up a raid you do not need to go with a fibre channel set up. You could get a Firewire Raid or a SATA RAid. Raids can be Hardware based, i.e. the box has a Raid controller inside. Or with a software Raid, You stripe the drives using the apple disk utility, or 3rd party software. For what you are doing you could simply add another SATA drive inside your G5 and be done. Or if you really want a RAID, add 2 drives of the same size and make (like hitachi 500gb 7200rpm drives) and use the apple disk utility and stripe them as RAID 0 and you will now have a 1TB Raid that will show up on your desktop as one drive. With DV or HDV you will have storage for days.

I agree totally with Frank, just put in another Sata Drive if you start to run out of room or even before you do print to tape maybe after finishing a project or two(you can always re-edit with those as well, make sure you have copies of your final cut projects on your boot drive, keep your tapes so if you want to re edit you can re-capture and then erase that capture drive. When you get to doing long projects in HD then I might think of getting a RAID.