New Apple Raid Card
I notice that apple is offering up a new raid card that is shipping in 6 weeks. I saw that the specs went up to 512MB of ram on the card and the speed increased over the last raid card.
My question is this. I am setting up my 2009 mac pro to use all 4 bays as a stripe 0 in order to open and save my photoshop files as fast as possible. Is there going to be any benefit to using this hardware raid card over lets say softraid 3 utility?
My main concern is using up too many resources on the mac when Photoshop is open. I want to limit as much software activity so that Photoshop can run optimally.
Any suggestions?
My question is this. I am setting up my 2009 mac pro to use all 4 bays as a stripe 0 in order to open and save my photoshop files as fast as possible. Is there going to be any benefit to using this hardware raid card over lets say softraid 3 utility?
My main concern is using up too many resources on the mac when Photoshop is open. I want to limit as much software activity so that Photoshop can run optimally.
Any suggestions?
Comments
you can do a 0+1 if all the drives are the same brand & size (similar models)
I would try that before forking out the cash for the raid card or for softraid because that's if you want to do a RAID 5, which has FAST reads, but SLOW writes. up to 75% hit in performance on a R5, it's really for databases.
I wouldn't run raid 0 on everything, that's asking for trouble.
you can do a 0+1 if all the drives are the same brand & size (similar models)
I would try that before forking out the cash for the raid card or for softraid because that's if you want to do a RAID 5, which has FAST reads, but SLOW writes. up to 75% hit in performance on a R5, it's really for databases.
I am actually running a raid 6 with a qnap nas over my network. Everything gets backed up so I am not worried about that.
As for the raid 0, I am looking to make my 4 disk raid as fast as possible for photoshop cs4. I was jsut curious what my options were as far as reliability. Currently I am running softraid 3 but I was wondering if the raid card from apple would be a safer bet while still running a raid 0. I am always worried about running software raid 0. You never know if the application could get corrupted or something where hardware to me is more reliable.
Any other thoughts would be good.
But the raid card has a RAID utility app to set it up too, I think... but the heavy lifting is handled with the card after that.
even with the nas, you are still running the risk of losing files as you are working, either with the RAID card or otherwise, & I'm not sure cs4 would benefit from a raid 0 just to open / save files...
I have CS4 & files are opening fine on my unibody MBP, it's plenty fast for me.
what kind of graphics files are you working with? I'm working with RAWs, TIFFs, etc for print layouts & just general tinkering, so maybe my demands aren't as high as yours.
I can't stop you from spending the money. if your workflow would benefit from it, that's the determination you're trying to make. You may have to speak to a apple tech on this one for a definitive answer. as I can only offer my advice.
personally, I would spend the $$ elsewhere, set up the raid with OS X. I've had little trouble with the setups with OS X as it's native to the OS & the machines.
Good Luck!
%34-%44 improvement over a Savvio 15k HDD.
http://download.intel.com/design/fla...Comparison.pdf
%34-%44 improvement over a Savvio 15k HDD.
nothing like using a sledge hammer to swat a fly...
I like that! if only I had the $$$...
nothing like using a sledge hammer to swat a fly...
I like that! if only I had the $$$...
well currently it does not seem like disk speed is my issue. I have 16GB currently installed in a new mac pro 2009 and I also have a fast scratch disk (250GB) worth that shows a benchmark of around 450MB/s read and write.
BUT GUESS WHAT..... I am still getting an error in cs4 saying that I do not have enough memory to open up more files..... I have the 4870 card from ati, tweaked cs4 with the 2 plugins suggested on sites and I still get this error.....
I've opened files that were pushing 200 mb with an old powerbook in the past.
but I've seen PS choke on 50k jpegs before as well. In my case it was an update that screwed up the the install, so I reloaded CS & it worked fine.
I doubt it's hard drive speed that's the issue.
i think something might be goofed up with the setup or the cs4 software. how big are the files? check your Preferences panel in PS & see what your settings are. You shouldn't use more than 70% of the available RAM.
I've opened files that were pushing 200 mb with an old powerbook in the past.
but I've seen PS choke on 50k jpegs before as well. In my case it was an update that screwed up the the install, so I reloaded CS & it worked fine.
I doubt it's hard drive speed that's the issue.
I changed my settings to 85% for the ram and so far everything seems ok. Before I had it set to 100% so who knows. Mind you I have always had it set that way with other macs and never had a problem but I never had more then 8GB installed.
I am experiencing some weird things still with the new mac but who knows, maybe a PS update might fix it. I know sometimes when I open PS it shows the video driver disabled. I can't check anything. Solution is to quit PS and re launch it and then it seems selected.
I just can't wait till PS starts to use more then 1 core to open up the files it's still slow at opening and saving the files.
because if you set it to 80 or 100%, you are not giving RAM to the OS or other apps, so it's writing EVERYTHING to the paging file
CS4 is only - still - a 32 bit app, so I'm not sure if it can even use 8 GB RAM.