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I want to daisy-chain a couple of fw800 drives to my mac and sync data between them. If possible I would like to run software raid 1 on them. So I am looking for input around the following questions:

How is the performance when copying between two chained firewire drives? (Copying between usb drives is awful)

Are there any caveats to this approach? Is it better to use something like a firewire hub?

Is it possible to run RAID on a setup like this?

Console
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3 Answers3

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How is the performance when copying between two chained firewire drives?

Unlike USB, Firewire was designed to run in a daisy-chained setup. Our performance with daisy-chained firewire devices has been great.

Is it possible to run RAID on a setup like this?

Yes, it is possible to setup a software RAID using the Disk Utility in Mac OS.
But as scoopdreams points out: A hardware RAID will generally be faster than a software RAID.

jweede
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I would recommend against this option really. Yes no doubt it will work fine and everything, but the performance impact is still there, because now the Firewire bus has to carry 2 streams of data (one to and from the workstation, and another to and from the mirrored RAID 1 drives), and the Mac is acting as RAID controller.

Also, I'm not too sure what will happen if you disconnect the firewire (alot of Macs have only 1 Firewire800 port) - because it's software RAID there is always a potential chance you will lose the RAID configuration (also I'm not too sure what will happen if there is an accidental power trip).

I recommend you use this solution, which is what I am using currently for my Time Machine backup - the Pleiades Jetdrive Taurus Super-S Combo.

Your data is worth investing in - and I strongly recommend you invest in this enclosure, which comes with a hardware RAID controller.

caliban
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I just bought a Drobo - if you can afford this option then it's definitely worth it. I've also heard of other similar devices such as ones made by Qnap but cannot speak personally of their performance.

The 2nd-gen Drobo has a Firewire 800 port so you can get blazingly fast data transfer speeds.

davidsmalley
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