Another Drive Expansion, advice needed!

[joshmcculloch]

Hi All,

I am currently using a 24" Aluminum iMac as my main workstation, and have an old MDD G4 PowerMac stuffed with 500GB drives as the main storage for my images and working files.  I'm just about out of room, and was tossing around a few ideas for upgrading.  They are:

Option 1) Swap out 500GB drives for 750GB drives (The max size I believe is available in PATA).  This doesn't seem to make much sense, as I will be back in this predicament pretty soon.  Plus, as the PATA drives are quickly becoming harder to find (if not at all) in larger sizes and they are now more expensive than their SATA counterparts.

Option 2) Put an Internal SATA PCI card in the G4 and run 4 1GB SATA Drives in there.  I could also remove the optical drives and fit another two HD's in there for a total of 6.

Option 3) Keep the G4 as is, but install an External SATA PCI card, and run an external SATA drive box like the ones available from MacGurus.  I'd most likely opt for an 8 bay...

Option 4) Drop the G4 completely, and get an 8-bay FW800 external enclosure (also from MacGurus) hooked up directly to the iMac.  Would this be slightly faster than the networked G4? 

I do access the files from other computers (my Macbook Pro, my wife's MacBook, etc), so a configuration that works in an environment like this would be good.

Any other obvious options I'm overlooking?  Thanks for any advice.

Cheers, Josh

[BobSmith]

I currently have a similar G4 attached to some Wiebetech external drive boxes.  The G4 itself has only a small (40GB) system drive in it.  Its otherwise empty.  The largest external box is an older 4 drive firewire case that uses only IDE drives.  The power supply in that case is getting flaky.  I've been thinking about filling up the G4 instead of putting more money into that case for most of the same reasons you describe.  I'm leaning toward your option 2.  I hadn't thought about using the optical drive bays as well.  That makes it even more attractive.  My only fear with the loaded G4 is cooling.  The drives are typically not very heavily accessed at all... especially not all at once... so maybe this isn't an issue?  I know that back in the day when G4s like this were common primary image editing workstations, I heard of a few instances of heat related problems from people that had packed, heavily used systems.

Bob Smith

[rcannonp]

I would go with #4. It would give you the best performance on your main workstation, and you could still access the drives from other computers in pretty much the same way that you probably already do. I would put the G4 out to pasture. Let it be a music server or something like that.

–Cannon

[BobSmith]

When I tested performance of FW800 drives on a G5 versus accessing them across a good gigabit network the performance difference in real world image editing tasks was minimal to non existent.  The downside to having the drives connected to the workstation is that you have to listen to them.  I love working on a Powerbook with a good external monitor while all those spinning drives and cooling fans are in a closet in a distant part of the building.  Dead quiet workspace.  Very, very nice.

Bob Smith

[joshmcculloch]

Hey Guys,

Thanks so much for your advice and suggestions.  I admit I'm really no closer to making up my mind, but I do value your input.

Bob - I hadn't thought about stuffing the G4 in a closet before, although I do recall seeing that in Peter's book come to mention it...  The MDD G4's did earn their well appointed nickname of "Windtunnel".  I even got Apple's replacement power supply that was supposed to be quieter!  It certainly would be nice to have a quieter workspace.

I worry about putting additional drives (replacing the optical drives) in the G4 for heat as you mentioned.  6 drives in a machine like that might be too much for cooling, and the power supply.  Add to that the fact that I would need to buy two SATA PCI cards, and maybe the G4 isn't looking like a great option?  I will have to buy drives regardless of which way I go, so the cost of the drives isn't an issue.  Really, it is about the cost of the case(s) and SATA PCI cards.  I could also recover the cost of the FW800 case by selling the G4.  Surely a Dual 867 G4 with 1.25 GB of RAM, Leopard, a Combo Drive and a Superdrive, and 1.7TB of drive space should be worth something?!

Any idea how loud the MacGurus cases are?  I also just found that you can purchase long (up to 10 meters) FW800 cables, so maybe I can still stash the FW800 case in the closet? 

Thanks again for your help.  Cheers, Josh

[rcannonp]

I have an old G4 myself, and I figured that I would give the network setup a try. Since I use my laptop as my main machine it seemed that it might make sense to connect my HD with my images to my tower, so that I can use it to perform scheduled backups and things like that. One problem that I've had is that files opened into Photoshop from Lightroom can't be saved back to the network drive. I get a dialog that pops up and says that the file is in use by another app. I thought I had read in another thread that you were starting to use LR. If you often take images from LR to Photoshop and back, you might think about that. I posted in the Adobe forums about that issue, but I haven't gotten a solution yet(it hasn't been up that long).

–Cannon

[peterkrogh]

Josh,
I'd suggest getting a FW box for SATA drives and buy 1 TB drives as needed.  That way you can switch without too much expense up front.  It's pretty much what I did as I went from the G4 pictured in the book to a new rig based on an Intel iMac server. I bought this kind of box for the drives, in 2 and 4 bay versions.

http://www.cooldrives.com/saiiqubayalq.html

The only thing I regret is that a direct SATA connection would give me access to the SMART data the drive collects about the drive's health.  This is not available over Firewire, but I really like using the iMac as the server, and there is no provision for a direct SATA connection.

Peter

[joshmcculloch]

Peter -

Thanks for the advice.  I didn't think about the SMART drive status, certainly food for thought...

Just to clarify, are you suggesting dropping the G4 altogether and just attaching the FW box directly to my workstation (a 24" iMac)?  I ask only because it seems you are still using an iMac as a server...

Any reason you opted for the 2 and 4 bay boxes, instead of one large 8-drive box?  Any opinion on CoolDrives boxes vs Macgurus?


Cannon -

Thanks for the heads up on Lightroom's issue with networked drives and round-trip files from Photoshop, I hadn't run into that yet, as I'm still trying to work through about 10000 files from a recent project, and haven't even gotten to making Derivatives yet!

Cheers, Josh

[peterkrogh]

Josh,
The reason to tuse the G4 would be because you:
1. Wanted the drive box in another room
2. Wanted to use the G4 for maintenance tasks for the files, and wanted to keep the iMac free.

As to the smaller boxes, there are a couple reasons.
1. The configuration (trayless design, Oxford 924 chipset) was not availabel in 8 bay
2. I like the idea of having a separate unit, in case the power supply fails in the main unit.
Peter

[joshmcculloch]

Thought I'd post what I ended up doing in case anyone was looking at their options in the future...

I ended up buying two Rosewill brand 5-bay PM-capable eSATA boxes from NewEgg for less than half the comparable MacGurus boxes, and ordered a Sonnet Tempo X4P PCI card from Macgurus to go in the G4.

I opted for keeping the G4 & going eSATA for a couple reasons:

- I wanted to keep a machine as a server, that could be on 24/7 and do file maintenance overnight (Backups!)
- I wanted to keep access to drive SMART data as Peter mentioned above
- I wanted to stick the G4 and the drive boxes somewhere cool & out of earshot (they're under the stairs now)
- I opted for two 5-bay boxes instead of one 8-bay also for the reason Peter stated above (basically a backup case in the event that one goes down)

Bought six 1TB SATA drives, plus the existing 2.25TB already in the G4 means I now have room to grow and room to make sure everything is backed up.

Cheers, Josh

[BoglePhoto]

Josh:

Thanks for the information. I have a couple of questions on the set up if you have a minute. The software that is bundled with this box seems to be very RAID oriented. Did you use it to set up the JBOD? It keeps referring to the 2TB partition limit that windows has in reading a drive. I know you are on a mac, but does that mean that it reads the five drives as one, and then only can you have a total of 2TB over the 5 drives. Does the port multiplier in the box let you see each drive as a separate drive (letter in the case of a PC), yet one hook up to the computer with the one eSATA cable?

As you can probably tell, my set up is windows based. The server that I am using is a Dell XP machine which is a Pentium, but not a dual core. I would add the eSATA card to the box to make the connection.

The bundle from NEWEGG has a PCIe card included for the eSATA port. I see you went with a different card for your set up. Any particular reason you chose to do that? Was that a compatibility issue with the Mac? I read the reviews from NEWEGG and it may also be that the included card is slower. With the upgraded card, are you seeing the 300 MB/s speed?

I looked everywhere and cannot see if the trays/drives are hot swappable. It appears that you can buy additional trays as well.

The set up is very intriguing. Thanks for any help you might be able to add to this.

Bill Bogle, Jr.

[joshmcculloch]

Hey Bill,

Glad to help.

Agreed, they focus much of their marketing and specs on the RAID options, and don't say much about JBOD setups.  I am indeed using both boxes just as JBOD's.

The 2TB limit as I understand it is a function of Windows, not the hardware itself.  Windows has imposed a 2TB limit on any given volume.  This means no individual drive can be larger than 2TB (to my knowledge, the maximum size of individual drives available today is 1.5TB, so this shouldn't be a problem).  You will run into problems if you do decide to RAID your drives (either RAID 0 or RAID 5), as these can easily get over the 2TB limit.  Peter, and many others here including myself, recommend avoiding RAID, as the additional speed gained doesn't offset the potential problems and data recovery issues you may have if a drive were to fail.

Just to clarify, if you put five 1TB disks in one box, connected by just the one eSATA cable, and set them up as JBOD, windows will see all five of them no problem and you can use all five drives.  If you were to RAID 0 all five 1TB disks, you would actually have a 5TB volume, but Windows would only be able to see/use 2TB of that (if it were to allow you to use it at all, I don't know as I'm not a windows guy!).

The Mac I'm running as my server only has PCI (I can also use PCI-X, as it is backwards compatible), not PCI-e (a newer, faster connection).  The bundled cards with the Rosewill boxes are PCI-e, so I was not able to use them.  I knew this at the time of ordering, and actually ordered a Norco brand 4-port PCI-X eSATA card that supports Port Multiplication and RAID.  I was having some issues with it, and realized it is not recommended for G4 Macs, and is best used in a PC.  I then decided to order the highly recommended Sonnet X4P card from Macgurus which is working flawlessly.

Note that you will never see the 300MB/s speed with JBOD.  You will need RAID to make that happen, as the limitation is the speed that the disks can write the data, not the speed of the cabling and interfaces.  Read up on RAID at Wikipedia.  That said, I run a Gigabit network here in the office, and am quite happy with my transfer speeds.

These enclosures are hot swappable (though I don't know about this if using RAID).  You just unmount the disk you want to swap, then pull it out, and swap in a new disk which auto-mounts.

Feel free to shoot back any questions.  Cheers, Josh

[joshmcculloch]

Update: It appears the power supply in one of the boxes just died this afternoon...  Came back from lunch and it was off, and will not come back on.  Have a call in to Rosewill Customer Service and will keep you guys posted.  Hopefully a one-in-a-million issue (maybe the savings over the MG boxes wasn't really worth it...), but certainly glad I had two drive boxes here or I'd be up the creek.  Just swapped the trays from the dead box to the working one and now back at it, though my backup workflow is a bit hooped until I get a replacement.  Thanks for suggesting using 2 smaller boxes instead of one large one in the first place Peter.

Cheers, Josh

[peterkrogh]

Josh,
Seems like you are the trial-by-fire guy this month.  Bummer.

Power supplies and PM controller chips are about all that can go wrong with one of these. I know that Rick at MacGurus does take pride in using more expensive  higher-quality power supplies for his boxes.  Might be the reason for what you're seeing, or just could be bad luck.

Peter

[joshmcculloch]

You said it.  I'm sure my blood pressure is way above the recommended limit at the moment...

I'm also having issues with my eSATA connection randomly dropping drives.  It happened before on my cheaper Norco eSATA card and I thought that was the problem, but I just had my first instance with the Sonnet X4P card also.  All the drives in the eSATA box show up on the desktop of the G4 Server, but only one drive (always seems to be the one closest to the bottom (physically) of the drive box) shows up on any networked machines.  A couple of reboots usually fixes it, but it is super annoying.  Anyone else seen anything like this?

Cheers, Josh