Apple

I'm trying to make a classic video capture/edit box out of my PowerPC Quadra 950 and I want to see if I can get a bit more of a performance boost by installing three identical (9gb 10Krpm SCA) drives and somehow RAIDing or striping them together. I'm not sure how to exactly do this under 7.6, nor do I know of any software that does this, or if my editor, Avid VideoShop, has the option built-in.
Is this even possible or am I stuck with just throwing in one large drive and using that (which seems really, really dumb)?

*shrug*

I don't think the OS has built in support for it. I think you needed either a hardware raid or 3rd party software.

I think there were a couple third-party apps, SoftRAID being the one that springs to mind first. I wouldn't bother.

I found a few brief mentions that the nubus "FWB Jackhammer" SCSI controller had RAID support -but not quite enough info to tell if it was hardware or software/driver based.

Also ran across a one mention of SoftRAID and OS 7.5 - looks like SoftRAID is still around , though there's no telling where you'd find a version that run on your Quadra.
http://www.softraid.com/support2xfaq.html

A SoftRAID tweak to boost performance "up to 44%": http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/tips/softraidcachetweak.html

Nice photo archive of Nubus cards here: http://picasaweb.google.com/teozenios/NubusCards#

and if you need another SCSI controller, an ATTO Silicone Express IV Nubus SCSI card for $20: http://yourmacstore.com/shop/shopexd.asp?id=193

I don't think I can spare my last free NuBus slot (because I filled all the other slots with equally awsome and wonderful cards) for a SCSI card that *might* support RAID. I guess I'll just throw in an 18gb SCA drive (or 36gb if I'm really nuts) and call it fair.

Yeah - I wouldn't count on finding one of the Jackhammer boards with the drivers. If you ever do find a way to do software RAID, a couple of drives striped across the second channel of the OEM host controller and the add-on SCSI board would probably offer you the best sustained disk I/O. If you use reasonably modern drives even a single one could probably exceed the throughput capabilities of your Quadra's native SCSI.

Wait a second. I'm getting mixed reports that HFS has a partition size limitation somewhere between 2gb and 2tb my sources being jax184 and some random website . Wikipedia is no help at all, neither is google. Most people discuss the block sizing. If it is 2gb for a non-booting volume, that really makes it not worth it to make nine individual partitions.

Variables to consider:

• HFS vs HFS Extended (aka HFS+)
• Version of MacOS the filesystem is being used on.
• Specific model of Macintosh that the filesystem is being used on.
• Limits on file sizes versus limits on filesystem sizes.

A little googling yielded
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA27115
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA21924
which should give you the info you are looking for.

Okay, emergency over.

Has anyone here worked with the "Raven-040" products from MicroNet? They're some sort of RAID that runs over the Q900/950's integrated SCSI ports. Not sure if the control is software or hardware based.

Note that performace will still suck relative to modern drives b/c the Quadra's SCSI ports are slow (5MB/sec sync SCSI). Chances are that a fast modern drive will saturate the port more than the old MicroNets, even with the array.