Need Hard Drive Advice!

[Espy]

So here's the deal. I have the stock HD in my MacBook Pro (2.93 Intel Core 2 Due, 8gb DDr3 Ram). I believe that this is the HD based on the model number of it: http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Momentus-7200-3-ST9320421ASG-internal/dp/B001GV5XFY

It's a great little HD (320 GB - internal - 2.5" - SATA-300 - 7200 rpm - buffer: 16 MB), but I'm running out of space and I need to be very, very careful what HD I put in here. This computer is my "show" computer. It runs Mainstage (http://www.apple.com/logicstudio/mainstage/) during our concerts. So it's controlling all the effects, tones and loops used during our lives shows for both of my keyboards and both of my microphones. I need to have a really reliable and fast HD to run this rig live.

So basically I can't have anything that isn't as good as whats currently in my machine. I was recommended this HD on the apple forums: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136835 but searching for it on amazon led me to their reviews: http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Momentus-7200-3-ST9320421ASG-internal/dp/B001GV5XFY where one guys states that it really takes a long time to access data which worries me quite a bit.

So after a lot of searching and reading a lot of reviews... I'm unsure of what to do. Anyone have any good HD wisdom that could give me some pointers or throw me in the right direction?

 

[strawman]

Unfortunately you need more space than what is reasonably available in solid state drives. The basic problem with notebook drives is the size precludes really high performance drives.

However, I'm quite certain the model you linked to will do what you need.

I'd suggest an alternative, however - an external hard drive. Using USB, or better yet firewire, with a fast 3.5" drive will give you all the speed you need. Your biggest concern is going to be seek time. If you were doing video, raw speed might have been more important, but in your case getting to the right blocks as quickly as possible (seeking) is going to be far more useful.

Further, haviong your OS and programs on the main drive, and your samples, loops, etc on the secondary drive effectively doubles your storage bandwidth.

Lastly, it's a lot cheaper, or the same cost but for a faster solution. Unfortunately it's an extra thing to carry around, and an extra point of failure, so it's not perfect.

What you really need is a laptop with two hard drives.

 

[Espy]

What you really need is a laptop with two hard drives.

Funny you should mention that... I guess NewEgg can sell me a kit that will allow me to take out my optical drive (if I need to access a Cd/DVD I can use my desktop) and add a second HD.
So I could keep my main HD as my OS and Mainstage rig and the second HD as my itunes/music/video etc that wouldn't need to be high demand stuff.

What do you think?

FYI: An external isn't really a good idea since my computer is mounted on a stand. There's no place for it available and I'd rather keep everything as "in house" as possible. So I'm thinking either double HD's or just a bigger single HD.

 

[strawman]

Oh yeah, replace the optical drive and toss a second hard rive in there. If you slice things up appropriately you should notice an increase in responsiveness, because the paging file isn't on the same drive you hold the content on.

 

[Espy]

Oh yeah, replace the optical drive and toss a second hard rive in there. If you slice things up appropriately you should notice an increase in responsiveness, because the paging file isn't on the same drive you hold the content on.

Parts I understood are in gregarious green.
Parts I think I understood are in bold blue
Parts the flew over my head are in radalicious red

 

[strawman]

hehehe.

Your computer doesn't have infinite memory. Your OS pretends it does. When a program wants more memory, the computer takes memory from another program, and gives it to the active program. The program that had its memory stolen has its memory stored to disk. This is called a paging file. In other words, your OS allows programs to use as much memory as they want, but some of the memory will be emulated (poorly and slowly) from the hard drive. This is one of the reasons a fast hard drive makes the whole computer seem faster.

By default, your paging file is on your main disk, so if you add another disk, then the OS can use the full bandwidth of the original disk for the OS, the programs you run, and importantly, the paging file, while it uses the full bandwidth of the new disk for all your content - loops, etc.

 

[PatrThom]

If reliability is your main concern, then replacing your optical drive with another hard drive is THE way to go...but not the way you think.

Replace your main drive with a 500GB, also replace your optical drive with another 500GB HDD. Set the two up as a RAID1 array (mirrored array type). This will not increase your speed, but if one drive fails you can carry right along without blinking.

Historically, Hitachi has been really good about reliability*. I like their 7K500 series. You might also consider installing a pair of Seagate Momentus XT's, which are hybrid flash/mechanical drives (they have 4GB flash built in to help out the mechanical platters). Each of them runs about US$100. Check for yourself what Newegg has to offer. Just make sure to get a drive which is only 9.5mm in height unless you are positive that one of the larger 12.5mm drives (usually this would be the higher capacity ones) will fit.

The idea about using an external to offload big files is also a good one. It allows for even larger capacity storage. Just make sure you are not saddling yourself with a single point of failure in the process.

--Patrick
*Western Digital just bought Hitachi's HDD division, no idea what that means for price/reliability going forward.

 

[Espy]

Man, lots to think about. Reliability is a concern but it's not a HUGE concern since I do daily backups.

Here's my thinking right now:
1) Buy the optical drive converter.
2) Get either a the WD Black Scorpio or one of the Momentus XT's (I love the idea of the hybrid drive but it's only 500 gigs, which is probably fine unless I go with option 3B)
3) One of two things will happen:
3a) If I go with the bigger 750gig HD, then at some point I will buy another 750 and do the Raid1 array. 750 is plenty of hd space for this computer so I have no worries raiding it.
3b) If I go with the 500gb hybrid drive then when I have the money I will replace my old 320HD with a 240 or so SSD drive in the next year or so. That will run my OS and apps and the hybrid drive will hold files.

I kind of like the idea of doing the raid1 array with the 750hd's. That gives me extra space and reliability. Are there any issues with using the 750 over the 500?
I do like what FLP is saying about paging files and since I back up regularly would I get better performance without the raid1?

 

[strawman]

Raid1, implemented well, should improve reading, but writing will stay the same, or possibly get worse (especially if it's software raid - I don't know if your computer supports hardware raid, but I suspect it does not).

One important thing to consider is that once you go raid, you can't simply unplug one of the drives and then plug it back in later and assume everything is going to be happy. At minimum the OS will complain, and you'll have to rebuild the drive when you put it back in. You shouldn't lose anything, but it can be a pain to deal with - so if you think you might want to plug the optical drive back in occasionally, you probably shouldn't plan on raid.

If the performance of your system is fine right now, either solution will be better than what you have now, so you should probably choose to move closer to a more reliable system, especially since you depend on it in a live setting. Not much is more embarrassing than having to try to complete a show with half your equipment useless.

 

[PatrThom]

What Steinman says, above. Apple's built-in RAID1 is software-based and does not improve read speeds (very few RAID1 solutions do it the way they're supposed to), but you do get the reliability benefit.

Some 750GB drives may be physically too tall to fit in the computer (per my 9.5mm v. 12.5mm comment).

The RAID1 solution is the way to go if your rig Can. Not. Be. Allowed. To. Fail. PERIOD. If you're ok with the occasional downtime, then going with a single big drive (augmented with external Time Machine backup) or with dual (but separate) internal drives (OS/Apps on one, data on the other) will work, too. The single question to ask yourself is...which is more important? The reliability? Or the space/cost?

--Patrick

 

[Necronic]

Or, if you are a little crazy and like to live on the wild side....

Run in RAID0 and short stroke both the drives. Keep everything you own on them.

Edit:

Actually, in all seriousness this isn't a bad suggestion (except the last part) You want/need performance. This means that you can sacrifice long term survivability and space for speed. Anything that is important should be stored on a different computer, this one is just for doing the shows.

For storage just buy some crappy external HD, minimize your storage on a performance drive as performance and space/reliability are mutually exclusive.

 

[PatrThom]

For the uninitiated (and those with dirty minds...shame!):

Short-stroking is the practice of telling a hard drive "only use 10% (or less) of your total area," the theory being that, as drives hold more data in the same amount of space, you can speed up access to that data by restricting the distance the head has to travel. Tom's Hardware has an article that goes into plenty detail, but the short of it is that your seek time improves as your partition size goes down, and it's a great way to get higher performance out of slower (5900, 5400, 4200) RPM drives (at a heavy cost to capacity, though).

--Patrick

 

[strawman]

Raid 0 in software is just not very performant though. But if your going to all that trouble, might as well shell out for fast SSDs. Cut seek times by an order of magnitude or more, increase throughput.

 

[Necronic]

pfff how dare you explain what I was saying. It's meant to be difficult to understand, makes me look cooler.

Edit: I thought striping WAS effective, but mirroring wasn't. So you're saying that striping without a dedicated raid controller is a waste? If so this is just one more reason to reformat my drives and start over, because it is a lot more risky to run that way.

Edit2: Actually, I think I set my RAID up through my BIOS before I installed the OS, so....still the same thing? Been way too long since I have looked at this.

 

[PatrThom]

It should be effective either way. The biggest difference is that if it is done via software, then it's your CPU that has to do all the RAID work (taking power away from doing something else). It takes barely any CPU to do RAID 0 or RAID 1, which is why those are the versions that come "free" with most motherboards.

--Patrick

 

[Espy]

Ok so update.

I went with the 750gb, 7200 rpm WD Black Scorpio in my OP.

After a harrowing hour of pulling apart glued down cables (exclusive to my iteration of the 17inch MBP! Sweet! Exclusive!) and unscrewing and taking out the Optical Drive I now have gone from having one 320gb, 7200rpm hd that had 2-4gigs open at any moment to a main hard drive with over 90gigs free and a secondary drive that is just as fast as the first that has over 560gigs free!

Eventually my plan is to remove the 320 and replace it with another 750 Black Scorpio and do the raid1 on them for maximum protection.

Thanks for all the help and advice folks!

 

[PatrThom]

You'll want to get another (that is, a third) drive of at least 750GB in size before you make the switch to RAID. Because creating a RAID out of your two internal drives will require the destruction of your partition, and this means you will need someplace to move all your stuff before you build the RAID, and then move it back.

--Patrick

 

[Espy]

Gotcha, yeah, I got backups to spare hanging around so I think I'm covered.