Good Day Everyone

I Would like to raid 0 or 5 my internal hard drives can it be done within utilities or do i need the APPLE Mac Pro RAID Card Kit I would like to raid all 3 drives if possible without purchasing the raid card

I use a macpro 2.6 quad core

Also is there a tutorial on how to install the decklink intensity pro card

regards

Robert

I would assume the decklink card comes with a manual? I'm about to order one, but don't have one at the moment so couldn't say. Maybe check the Blackmagic website

As for RAIDing your drives, you can always make a software RAID in disk utility. Find Disk Utility in the utilities folder in your applications folder, and the options to create a RAID from there are extremely straightforward.

I have a software RAID 0 in my Mac Pro and it has been fast and reliable. However, If you have only three hard drives, I wouldn't RAID all of them together. I would use one drive for the system and RAID 0 the other two and use them for your Users folder. Also, keep in mind that you need identical drives for RAID 0...

I have a system drive plus 2 other drives for my media so i have 1 bay spare

Could i add 3 new drives and raid all 3 within disk utility or can i only raid 2 drives

I am trying to upgrade for HDV work

Personally, I am very nervous about any software based raid. You lose your system you lose EVERYTHING. While you can do it unless you have a very good backup pay for hardware raid or just leave it alone

Software RAID is arguable safer than hardware RAID though. It's one less point of failure and if it ever does fail it's easier to recover, whereas if your hardware RAID card dies in 5 years time you're stuck trying to look for the same model card which may or may not still exist.

Anyway, you can't really RAID 3 drives except as RAID 0 or RAID 5, and I'm not sure if OS X will even let you do that.

Yeah. You can RAID 0 as many drives together as you want. I have four drives in my Mac Pro. One System drive and the other three RAID 0 for Users. Software RAID in Leopard is very robust. I wouldn't ever bother with a RAID card unless you want RAID 5 or higher. I can't see the point of RAID 5 for the average user. RAID 0 with a good backup strategy is ideal.

I work with easily recoverable files - video files and render files ONLY on the RAID, keep all FCP/Motion/graphics/everything separate from the RAID, and there's no worries. It's easy enough to recapture a tape and resync the assets, its a world of hurt if you keep everything on a RAID without backup.

You wont need any more than a 2 disc RAID if working with HDV I don't reckon. I've worked with HDV a few times, and it isn't very taxing on the system as far as stream playback goes. Even ProRes or AIC shouldn't give you grief. The other option of course, if you can be bothered (and I don't think it is worth it), but you could offline edit.

the way i back-up now is i digitize a project then copy it over to an external even the project file so all i do while working in that project is copy the project file to my external every 30min. this is standard practice for me.

++1 Very good answer to problem.