Digital BW, The Print

Michael, I'm another Alan and my PC used a different form of a RAID setup
than Alan Ansell talks about. His description of a "RAID" does indeed
protect your data because you automatically make 2 copies, one on each
drive, of everything! Basically one drive is a mirror of the other drive.
You don't gain any speed from this setup but you do gain a great deal of
security, especially if you don't backup on a regular basis - many people
don't:-)

 

The RAID 0 that I use takes 2 identical drives and spreads the data across
the 2 drives when writing to the drives and reads from the 2 drives when
opening a file. The gain here is speed, the computer can access the files
MUCH FASTER because the system doesn't have to "hunt" as much on one drive
for the pieces of any file. Defragging the drive(s) is as simple as if you
only had one drive, in fact only one drive appears when you open "My
Computer".

 

Is it "really worth the time/trouble to set it all up?" , absolutely! The
only "trouble" involved is having the RAID controller and as Alan A.
mentioned most motherboards come equipped with one. The only other concern
is the 2 drives have to be the same size and speed. I'm not sure if they
need to be from the same manufacturer but getting a matched pair would
eliminate any problems you might encounter.

 

And lastly, if you're building a desktop system you've no problem with room,
I've a pair of 80 gig drives in my laptop!

 

So, bottom line is what are you hoping to gain? Increased reliability or
increased speed? Like Alan A. I have 2 gigs of RAM in my laptop and I'm able
to open very large files. Photoshop CS 2 can (theoretically at least:-)) use
nearly 3.5 gigs of RAM, BUT on a PC running XP (I run Pro) your usually
limited to 2 gigs. On my G5 Mac I've 6.5 gigs of RAM and CS 2 and in the
program preferences the Mac uses a different default RAM setting than my PC
does. One thing to be very careful about when messing with allocating memory
to Photoshop, allocating too much, say 80-90 %, will probably make your PC
crash because there won't be enough left over for the OS and any other apps
you might be running in the "background". My PC, with 2 gigs of RAM total,
is using 55% of the available 1757MB, which = 966MB and would seem to mean
my PC only needs 250MB to run the OS, my Mac, w/6.5 gigs, has 3072MB
available to PS which uses 70% or 2150MB, so it looks like the Mac is a
memory HOG and uses about 3.5 gigs just to run! 

 

Good luck, Alan

 

  _____  

From: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Michael-K
Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 9:59 AM
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Digital BW] Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management

 

Thanks, Alan. Regarding the Raid setup, are the "real world" benefits of
this route really worth the time/trouble to set it all up? Can you provide a
nutshell summary of what these benefits are? Thanks.

-Michael K

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