Hi:
I am updating and improving my Macpro, mid 2010, 3.33GHz, 6 core Intel Xeon with 24 GB of RAM, ATI Radeon 5870, and AJA LHI card for broadcast monitoring. I have been running Softraid on two bays, and am thinking about acquiring a Macpro Raid card. Will it make much difference, especially if I add an addition drive, so all three bays are in Raid 0 or 5? So far, the biggest improvement to FCP performance has been an SSD drive from MacSales for the system and applications. There is noticeably less dropped frames and faster display of the filters.

I also have a Macsales Esata Mercury Elite Raid connected. Although it is fast, there always seems to be a lag when it first starts up and is required to do something..
I see a lot of Macpro Raid cards for sale on Ebay. Is this a sign that this technology is becoming less appealing because of thunderbolt?

I'd get the card and put two 4TB drives in there for the RAID.

You'll see some improvement, as hardware RAID is a bit faster than software RAID. But, not sure if it's going to be enough to make a difference. The system you have is about at the limit. A better RAID will only offer minimal improvements. You are now working with the limitations of FCP X's own speed. I'd stick with what you have.

If you have 1TB drives, upgrade to 2TB. I'm about to purchase one of the new 4TB drives to test out. But can't recommend them just yet.

Personally I've never noticed the performance difference between RAID 0 and RAID 1. I prefer the redundancy of 1. In any case, RAID is not an substitute for a reliable daily backup to a separate drive system. With a good backup system in place, RAID 0 can often squeak out a little more performance.

Don't use RAID 5 on systems smaller than 6TB or less. In my years I've never seen any benefit.

I have a CalDigit raid card installed in my Mac Pro 4,1. Because there's no iPass connector on the backplane, I'm using the TransIntl ProCable with my sata drives reversed in the sled and taking power from the sata ports 2 & 3 and connecting via a multicable to the CalDigit card. This allows me to RAID all four drives and use the optical bay for my boot drive with an SSD. I also connect to an external CalDigit Element RAID. The external RAID is my media drive in RAID 0 and the internal RAID is my Time Machine backup in RAID 5.

RAID speed needs are really dependent on what sort of material (HD, ProRes, 2K, 4K) you plan on working with. Have you done a speed test on your SoftRaid to see what kind of throughput you're getting? Use the Black Magic speed test. Have you found that you have dropped frames when you're playing back? Another consideration is how you use your media drives. I try not to store anything on them past my project period and generally only keep stock material and current projects on them. If you do that, then it's not important to have massive media drives if you do some housekeeping from time to time. Try to think of them less as storage and more as actively used space.

I done some testing a number of years ago when I first started using raid, it was on a PC but it should translate the same.

I was getting much the same read speed with raid 0 and Raid 1. With write speeds Raid 1 was marginally slower than a normal drive, but the difference was minute and it's the read speeds that make the big difference on how well an NLE performs.

At the time I also preferred to use Raid 1, but now I use Raid 0 with a backup, mainly as I started using a backup on top of my Raid 1 and only really changed to get the full disk space back.

I see the first of the 4TB SATA drives is out. Cost the same as two 2TB drives, roughly. But I can get 3TB drives and have more GB per dollar. Just waiting for SSD drives to increase to 2TB and cost the same as spinning disks.

The Macpro Raid has caching..does this get rid of that lag that I am experiencing with Softraid and with the Mercury elite 4TB raid external? I am leaning towards getting the raid card because used prices on ebay appear at least half of what I see on the Apple site.

I do not understand why adding an SSD to my system/applications, actually seem to speed up the operation of FCP X. Does its programming need to go back to the application a lot after it is loaded?

All hardware RAID worth its salt will have caching. Does it get rid of lag? What lag? The Mercury Elite should have caching.

The reason we put media on a secondary drive is due to the bandwidth available to hard drives. Only a specific amount of data can flow between a drive and the CPU. Video and audio eat this up fast with video editing because you're using several live streams at once.

The OS and application are reading/writing to their hard drive constantly, also. This is why you much keep 10-15% of any drive's capacity as free space, for these invisible working files to be dealt with by the app and OS. So yes, your app and OS are constantly needing to read/write to the system drive to get work done efficiently. An app is a living, breathing entity that runs between the system drive it's on, the CPU, RAM, GPU, etc. It's giving out instructions constantly and having to go back to itself on the drive when new operation instructions are called for. Yes, an SSD OS drive is a big step towards system speed.

I'm looking into one for my 3,1 Mac Pro. Not sure I can. That and a GPU upgrade is all I'd need to do. I'm running off 3 internal 2TB media drives, no RAID, and I'm getting great performance.

Thanks for the explanations..very helpful.

Am seeing several Apple Raids on ebay. Understand the difference between the blue card and the black card, but what about the battery...I assume they go dead after a while, and one ad on ebay mentions the fact that the card doesn't come with cables.....what cables? Would they be for SAS?

I'm also updating a Mac Pro (2008 2.8 8-core) that I use with FCPX. I have 14gb RAM and a Radeon 5780. I have a variety of 1TB and 2 TB drives filling the drive bays. I'm looking at getting an SSD. I've read for years that OS/Apps should be on one drive and media on another. But, I've now read that with SSDs that advice is no longer applicable - the speed of the SSD allows both to share one drive with no bottlenecks if there is adequate space. I figure if an SSD for OS is good, then using one for FCPX Events/Projects is even better.

So, I'm considering one 512 SSD to hold OS (Lion),Apps, and a single current FCPX Event/Project at a time. I also thought about a 128 for OS/Apps and a second 256 for just FCP, but the one drive just seems easier, cleaner, and doesn't take up an extra bay. Any reason I shouldn't go the one drive route?

Thanks

No, the rule does not change with SSD drives. The reason we have two drives is not due to "read/write speed", but due to "bandwidth".

Like a garden hose. No matter how fast the water comes out of the faucet, the width of the hose is the same and only allows a set number of gallons per minute to pass through. Your SSD drive is limited by the same "data bus" (hose) as your SATA drives. Even though the SSD drive can "read/write" (faucet) faster.

You'll still want separate OS/app drive and media drive. Put all Projects and Events on the media drive.

You could add more RAM, that would help. I find 16-24 about what realistically will help out FCP and Motion.

An SSD drive for your OS/apps would definitely help. They're too small to be media drives at this point in time. Stick with a 2-4TB SATA drive in one or more bays for your Projects and Events.

Other World Computing has some SSD kits that can add them to your regular drive bays and/or optical drive bays (depending on your Mac Pro model).

So the 5780 GPU runs ok in that 2008 MP? I'm thinking about getting one in my 3.2gHz 2008 Mac Pro.

OK, thanks for the clarification. I'll just get a 256mb SSD to use as my boot drive. I'll have to think more about the ram. I plan to get a new Mac next year after I see what the Mac Pro options are then and I'm hesitant to put much more into this one that I can't use in a new one.

I use MenuMeters and it rarely shows all 14GB that I have now being used, so I'll try just the SSD first.

Of course, I meant to say the Radeon 5870 - it has been flawless and was certainly an improvement over my GeForce GT 120.

Thanks again for the info!

Hi:
As Ben says, putting an SSD into Bay 1 will make a BIG difference to the way FCP acts. MacSales has a nice tray to hold the SDD and if you want to go back to a regular drive, it is really easy to swap it out.

Do those SSD actually still have any speed advantage when used as media drive? AFAIK, they shine with intermittent read/write access, but rather fail with a continuous data stream.

They would outperform a spinning disk. But the size limitations and really super high price per MB of space cause most folks to use them as OS/app drives, and SATA / eSATA as media drives.

Now, I did spend two weeks on someone's 2011 17" MBP with maxed out RAM, an SSD internal, and T'bolt external media drive, and it freaking SCREAMED!

Now, I did spend two weeks on someone's 2011 17" MBP with maxed out RAM, an SSD internal, and T'bolt external media drive, and it freaking SCREAMED!

I can confirm this. We did a lot of testing to put together the fastest possible compact editing system for the upcoming Olympics in London. We will take a number of maxed out 17" MBPs with internal SSD and external Promise TB RAIDs running Lion and FCPX 10.0.5. This combination is awesome. If I have the time I will report on how this system performs under pressure (4 to 5 hours 1080p XDCAM HD ingested footage/day edited into three different programs that have to be uplinked before the 6 o clock news every day).

Ronny, I can only hope you'll find the time.

Have fun with the Olympics!