RAID???

[digifriend]

Hi,
I am about to get a Mac Pro. I am switching from PC. One of the big things I need to know for customizing the Mac is whether I should get it setup with RAID capability or not. I know they say that PRo Tools runs best on multiple drives dont they?

[Mr. Anderson]

Multiple drives are good, but Pro Tools does not support RAID.

[digifriend]

So how does a person do multiple drives on a mac unles they use RAID? I was under the understanding that RAID WAS Macs way/version of multiple drives. Or does RAID do a completely different function?

[Slim Shady]

RAID is something completely different. RAID definition on Wikipedia.

To do multiple drives on a mac, you just daisy chain them together (firewire drives that is).

[digifriend]

So then its not something I need to worry about? It sounds nice like it would actually be good for Pro Tools to be able to read and write across several hard drives as if they were one but much faster. Unless you can still do the same thing daisy chaining them like mentioned...

[Slim Shady]

It's not something you should worry about, other than to steer clear of RAID drives.

You can achieve what you're talking about with daisy-chaining. If you want to record across multiple drives, you can set that up with PT's Round Robin disc allocation. It's not necessary on an LE rig though, the track counts aren't high enough to warrant multiple drives just for PT, unless maybe you're working on big projects in 88.2/96k.

[dougied]

On my Mac Pro Dual Quad I can have up to 4 Terabytes of storage. You can install 4 separate hard drives in the Mac Pro, and you have to have Pro Tools installed on the system drive then use the others for audio/ video storage/ transfer.

[digifriend]

Thanks for the info Slim Shady. That exactly what I wanted to know. I have other questions related to what I should and should not get with my Mac. I already asked if its better to go with the smaller processor and get some extra RAM...from a 3rd party. So I have that.
The other major thing is that as far as I know If i get this new Mac with whatever OS they have these days then PT wont work. So I have that to consider. Will they ever solve this?

[Slim Shady]

Actually, PT does work on 10.5 for most folks, albeit with a few quirks depending on what you use the software for.

That being said, we are also supposedly extremely close to Digi releasing the official PT on Leopard patch (within the next week hopefully, if recent Digi estimates are true), so you don't really need to worry about the OS so much either way.

[Orange_METaL]

I know that Protools does NOT support raid... but I'm curious to know why?
I too would have thought that it would be beneficial.. it also make more sense now that the new macs have 3 bays for internal HDs..
The data transfer rate is faster with Sata then FW800 so thats a bonus there...