apple raid, hard drive config & time machine Qs

Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
hi folks,



just about to jump back onto an apple box (mac pro 8 core)

after a 3 year linux stint, and have a few questions about

apple raid, time machine, and my hard drive setup.



this is the hard-drive setup i am considering:



4 internal drives in 2 pairs of raid0 sets for performance.

i have not yet decided on the capacities & brand or even if

i will be going sata or sas yet. i will be getting the apple

raid card regardless.



raid card questions:



as far as i can tell the apple raid card

will support 2 x raid0 arrays, correct?



it will NOT support 1 sas array simultaneously

with one sata array, correct?



it will only support 4 drives total, correct?



i would like to put boot and swap on set 1, and my home directories

on set 2. i know having boot on raid0 is risky btw. i also know os x

doesn't by default have a separate swap partition, but more on that

below.



my backup strategy will be. mirror the boot partition to the stock

320GB drive that i get in the mac pro which will be in an external

enclosure. this will probably be done weekly with a cron script or

one of the tools like SuperDuper i've been hearing about. the external

drive ideally would be bootable.



questions about my boot setup:



does the external mirror drive need to be esata to be bootable or can it be

firewire 800?



is it worth the trouble of making a separate OS swap partition on this

raid set, and would doing so improve or degrade performance?



how smart are tools like SuperDuper at NOT mirroring things like swap?



on my second internal raid set, i would like to have my home directories.

i have read that this isn't too difficult to achieve in os x. i would like

to have time machine back up only my home directories to another external

drive. it will be a time capsule, or much more likely, an OWC Guardian MAXimus

in hardware raid1.



can time machine be instructed to only back up the home directories?



will i have to fight OS X to achieve any/all of the above?



any comments or advice on the above greatly appreciated, best,

_c

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 1
    rezwitsrezwits Posts: 879member
    I didn't read in depth all your setup dreams but I just wanted to let you know something about the Mac Pro RAID Card that stopped me from getting it. Basically you can't run linux or windows...



    at all...



    bummer



    Just thought I would give you that tip just in case you wanted to run those at all...



    well I don't know about linux, but I have read windows won't so I figured linux was in the same boat.



    Laters...
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