Upgrading Mac Internal HDs

[Beamtracer]

Question 1: What's the best way of copying all the data from the SCSI drives to the larger IDE drives? They need to be exact duplicates of course (i.e. bootable).
This software called Carbon Copy Cloner will make an exact duplicate of your drive.
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html


Question 2: From talking to a friend of mine who's a PC tech, I'm under the impression that if I copy a smaller drive to a larger one, I'll wind up with two partitions; one for the drive and one for the extra, unused space. This is not what I want. Is there a way to copy the data and keep everything on the larger drive as one large partition?
Strange that someone who is a tech expert said that. Carbon Copy Cloner can clone your drive to a larger one than the original.

Question 3: Is it worth it to buy an extra IDE drive to set up a software RAID through the Mac Disk Utility? And is that even possible if I'm starting with a disk that already has data on it?)
If you had 3 or more drives it might be worth it. With 2 drives I'd just keep them unraided.

If you want redundancy (back up security), you could use backup software to keep the drives identical mirror images of each other.

[Triple G]

Thanks Beam, someone from another forum suggested CCC also...looks like it should do what I need.

Strange that someone who is a tech expert said that. Carbon Copy Cloner can clone your drive to a larger one than the original.

Well, like I said, he's a PC tech, not a Mac tech...he made it clear to me that his info may or may not apply.

I've been doing a fair bit of research this weekend into SATA drives and controllers, seeing what my options were with that route as opposed to regular ATA100 or 133 drives. SATA is nice because it's relatively cheap, but even at 1.5 Gbps throughput, it's still less than half the speed of the Ultra 320 SCSI drives I currently have installed. There are PCI cards that I could buy and install which would allow for the 2nd-gen SATA drives to be hooked up, and would deliver (theoretically, anyway) throughputs of 3.0 Gbps...nearly the same speed as SCSI. But...by the time I bought the PCI card and the new drives, I'd be looking at roughly the same cost as just buying a new SCSI drive in the first place. So, I think that's what I'm going to wind up doing.

The reason I was asking about RAID setups was just to alleviate some of the speed loss that I'd be getting by switching from SCSI to ATA100/133. I've got a couple of external Firewire drives with Retrospect scripts that I run every few days or so, so redundancy is not a problem. I learned my lesson on data backup the hard way. :hmm:

[DaForce]

I would imagine your 6 year old scsi drives wouldnt be all that quick nowdays anyone.. the IDE/SATA drives would be as quick I imagine.
If you want really quick drives and you machine has a sata interface look at the new Westerndigital Raptor 150gb.. these things are as fast as modern days scsi drives!!
But cost around $500 AUD each :-(

[Triple G]

I would imagine your 6 year old scsi drives wouldnt be all that quick nowdays anyone.. the IDE/SATA drives would be as quick I imagine.
If you want really quick drives and you machine has a sata interface...<snip>... these things are as fast as modern days scsi drives!!

Actually, these 6-year old SCSI drives still have a higher data transfer rate than any of the ATA/IDE drives currently on the market, including Serial ATA II. SCSI may be an old standard, but in terms of sheer throughput speed and data integrity, it can't be beat (http://www.computerworld.com/hardwaretopics/storage/story/0,10801,79769,00.html). SATA III, which reportedly will not hit the market until sometime next year, boasts a throughput speed of 600 Mbps (rnearly double that of SCSI 320). But...can't put something in my machine if it doesn't exist yet. :D

[DaForce]

True True :D

The new raptor is certainly doing a good job of mixing things up.
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200601/WD1500ADFD_3.html

[Triple G]

Hmm...interesting results. Just the fact that it can almost hang with the SCSI drives is impressive. But, I don't need 150GB of storage space (40 will do just fine), so for the $300+ that that WD would set me back, I can pick up two 36GB SCSIs (one to boot OSX, one to boot OS9), spend less money, and have at least as good of performance, most likely better.

SATA III is definitely something I'll be keeping my eye on, but for now I've made up my mind...I'll be sticking with SCSI for the forseeable future. :)

Thanks to all for the info/advice...much appreciated. :beer:

[DaForce]

Yeah good idea.. SCSI seems certainly the better way for you to go.

A friend of mine who I do some tech work for.. had an old server with a 4gb scsi drive in it.. man that thing was shit slow.. HAHAHA

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