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Right. Starting afresh with my i7 rig.

2 x 74GB SAS 15,500RPM

1 x 1000GB SATA2

I might be getting my hands on 2 140GB 15.5K SAS drives and a controller card.

Could anyone recommend config for the best speed from having the 2 sas and 1 sata, and 4 sas and 1 sata.

Thanks.

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Canon EOS 5DmkII + BG-E6 + Canon EOS 40D + BG-E2N + Canon EOS 33
Canon 17-40 F/4L USM + Canon 24-70 F/2.8L USM + Canon 28mm F/1.8 USM + Canon 70-200 F/2.8L USM IS + Canon 85mm F/1.8 USM
Canon Speedlite 580EX II + Canon Speedlite 540EZ + 2 x Nikon SB-80DX
Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger - 5 x Cactus V2s Wireless Reciever

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Hi Daniel,

2 x SAS as RAID 0, Drive C:\ and hosting the OS and a few choice apps such as PhotoShop with the 1GB SATA as Drive D:\ and holding your data and your other programs

4 x SAS as RAID 10 (5 if you need more space), Drive C:\ and hosting the OS and a few choice apps such as PhotoShop with the 1GB SATA as Drive D:\ and holding your data and your other programs

If the extra two SAS drives have to be paid for I wonder if you might get more bang for your buck by buying three 1GB SATA drives instead and using the four SATA drives as a RAID 10 array. My own drive D:\ has exactly that config (4 x Samsung Spinpoint F1 DT) and it's almost as quick as my Samsung PB22-J 256GB SSD if HDTach's read tests are to be believed.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

See, raiding everything as the OS drive is what I have just now.

OS - 2 x 74GB 15K SAS - Raid 0

DATA - 1 x 1TB 7.2K SATA2 Samsung (32MB cache)

But my main bit of greif is having things like thumbnails in lightroom have to load, then render, then have the little stars, numbers etc. all load on. I want that to happen AS i am scrolling instead of loading.

I thought that by making a catalogue a quarter then shifting it to the 1TB for storage after the quarter is over. This way I could keep data on the SAS drives for when im working on it.

Although thats obviously a slight pain for keepings things orgonised, I'm considering 2 1TB's in raid 0 to see what thats like. If we have one open, or one going away for repair/replacement (bad sectors etc.) in the shop i'll give it a try.


Also the 4 drive SAS array as raid 10... I'm trying to work that out in my head.


I had thought - 2 x 74GB SAS Raid 0 THEN one 140GB SAS as a mirror of that stripe, so if either drive went down, pop in another 74 gb to rebuild, or a 140 to rebuild that. I dunno what raid that would be called though!

The spare 140 for Photos, 1TB for storage?

_________________
Canon EOS 5DmkII + BG-E6 + Canon EOS 40D + BG-E2N + Canon EOS 33
Canon 17-40 F/4L USM + Canon 24-70 F/2.8L USM + Canon 28mm F/1.8 USM + Canon 70-200 F/2.8L USM IS + Canon 85mm F/1.8 USM
Canon Speedlite 580EX II + Canon Speedlite 540EZ + 2 x Nikon SB-80DX
Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger - 5 x Cactus V2s Wireless Reciever

MY FLICKR!

I'd echo what Bob said on the SAS drives, except for raid 10 you ideally need 4 drives the same, whereas here it sounds like you're getting two different pairs. So as a variation on the 4 drives, I'd suggest mirror the 140s and install the OS on 66GB partition of that. Mirror the 74s and software raid 0 that with the remaining 74 from 140s. Wont be ideal as the disks are different types though, but should still give an advantage in transfer speeds compared to not.

Personally I'd sacrafice the possible speed and capacity a little and keep it simpler. Just run the SAS pairs as independant mirrors.

And a wild idea, ditch the SAS and go SSD? No idea what they're worth and therefore what it might buy you.

_________________
Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

SAS drives are a free

Thought about selling them but I think im gonna wait for SATA 3 before I go SSD

_________________
Canon EOS 5DmkII + BG-E6 + Canon EOS 40D + BG-E2N + Canon EOS 33
Canon 17-40 F/4L USM + Canon 24-70 F/2.8L USM + Canon 28mm F/1.8 USM + Canon 70-200 F/2.8L USM IS + Canon 85mm F/1.8 USM
Canon Speedlite 580EX II + Canon Speedlite 540EZ + 2 x Nikon SB-80DX
Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger - 5 x Cactus V2s Wireless Reciever

MY FLICKR!

.
Whoops! Sorry, Daniel - I didn't spot the different capacities of those SAS drives.

Bob.

_________________
OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

Although I'm not familiar with lightroom, I have to wonder if that is access time limited not so much transfer rate limited, particularly if it might be many random small reads. However good 15.5krpm is, they are still slow against a SSD in that specific application. It may be interesting to see if anyone has tried storing the lightroom database (or whatever it is called) on a SSD.

_________________
Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

If all that is stored in the lightroom database (which isn't that big), then how about storing that DB in a ramdrive?

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I take pictures so quickly, my highschool was "Continuous High".

Well its not just the database. the whole loading of the photos into ram, then rendering etc.

I'd like it to be instant and seemless. Core i7's rocking around 3.4-3.6GHz, and theres plenty ram to go around, and its plenty fast too. So I'm simply assuming its the hard drive thats slowing things down.

_________________
Canon EOS 5DmkII + BG-E6 + Canon EOS 40D + BG-E2N + Canon EOS 33
Canon 17-40 F/4L USM + Canon 24-70 F/2.8L USM + Canon 28mm F/1.8 USM + Canon 70-200 F/2.8L USM IS + Canon 85mm F/1.8 USM
Canon Speedlite 580EX II + Canon Speedlite 540EZ + 2 x Nikon SB-80DX
Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger - 5 x Cactus V2s Wireless Reciever

MY FLICKR!

Well, you could of course always do a small test by creating a seperate lightroom DB with, say, 50 photos, and loading that into a ramdrive. Performance will obviously be less with an SSD, but it should give you an indication where the bottleneck lies. Selecting to load full previews instead of thumbnails might also speed things up at the cost of RAM usage.

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I take pictures so quickly, my highschool was "Continuous High".

A "small database" wouldn't need to go into a ramdrive. After the first access it will be cached in ram for repeat accesses (until it gets filled otherwise), but it would indicate if disk is limiting I guess.

_________________
Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Yeah I am gonna do some testing see what loads.

1TB OCZ SSD would be awsome, maybe 2?

_________________
Canon EOS 5DmkII + BG-E6 + Canon EOS 40D + BG-E2N + Canon EOS 33
Canon 17-40 F/4L USM + Canon 24-70 F/2.8L USM + Canon 28mm F/1.8 USM + Canon 70-200 F/2.8L USM IS + Canon 85mm F/1.8 USM
Canon Speedlite 580EX II + Canon Speedlite 540EZ + 2 x Nikon SB-80DX
Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger - 5 x Cactus V2s Wireless Reciever

MY FLICKR!

[UPDATED]

Ok so I got 2 15.5K Cheetahs dropped in along with a Dell SAS card, straight from a blade server

I'm gonna safely say 32bit XP Pro support shouldnt be a problem, Server 2003 drivers should work if there isnt XP ones. I'm assuming Vista/Server 2008 Drivers should work for windows 7...

Anyway. These 2 drives appear similar at first glance but one doesnt have size etc. marked on it but im assured its 74GB, the other does.

One is running firmware 0002 the other is S515....i'm gonna phone my contact tonight about it since I never picked them up in person.

(sounds so shadey doesnt it haha, they're getting chucked out and replaced with 2.5inch 15k drives or SSD's in the servers anyway so might as well go somewhere useful )

_________________
Canon EOS 5DmkII + BG-E6 + Canon EOS 40D + BG-E2N + Canon EOS 33
Canon 17-40 F/4L USM + Canon 24-70 F/2.8L USM + Canon 28mm F/1.8 USM + Canon 70-200 F/2.8L USM IS + Canon 85mm F/1.8 USM
Canon Speedlite 580EX II + Canon Speedlite 540EZ + 2 x Nikon SB-80DX
Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger - 5 x Cactus V2s Wireless Reciever

MY FLICKR!

I'm gonna say I'm not good at placing bets lol!

The dell card wont work in XP Pro no matter what driver I use!

"My Contact" however had it running under Vista, AND there is Server 2008 drivers...I'm picking up a copy of Windows 7 x64 Pro and im gonna see if that does the trick.

If so it'll go a little something like this.


Marvel SAS Controller:
- 1 x SAS 146GB 15.5k - JBOD - Windows 7 Pro x64
- 1 x SAS 74GB 15.5k - JBOD - Windows XP Pro x32

Marvel SATA Controller:
- 2 x SATA 1TB 7.2k - Raid 1 - Archived Data
- 2 x SATA 500GB 7.2k - Raid 1 - New Data
- 1 x SATA 250GB 7.2K - JBOD - Spare

Dell 5iR SAS Controller:
- 2 x SAS 74GB 15.5k - Raid 0 - Cache, Pagefile, Scratch Disk.


This leaves me with 2 spare 250GB drives, and 2 Spare 120GB drives, I'm giving a 160 away so my cousin can dual boot 7 and xp, it was the odd one out anyway.

Im also having a problem getting into the dell cards configuration although I think thats becasue of my on board SAS controller kicking in after the dell one has done its thing.

Also If I can boot Windows 7 from the Dell controller, I'll be wanting to do that since that means I can keep a scratch disk for windows on my on board SAS controller.....infact that would then mean I can't access my windows 7 document etc. from xp...

Anyone got a cheap 4 SAS port controller card?

_________________
Canon EOS 5DmkII + BG-E6 + Canon EOS 40D + BG-E2N + Canon EOS 33
Canon 17-40 F/4L USM + Canon 24-70 F/2.8L USM + Canon 28mm F/1.8 USM + Canon 70-200 F/2.8L USM IS + Canon 85mm F/1.8 USM
Canon Speedlite 580EX II + Canon Speedlite 540EZ + 2 x Nikon SB-80DX
Cactus V2s Wireless Trigger - 5 x Cactus V2s Wireless Reciever

MY FLICKR!