OSX on Striped drives

[LaloGS]

OK, here's the deal: we have a MacPro Quad with a 250GB boot drive running OSX Tiger 3.4.10. And we have three more 750GB hard drives striped together in RAID disk with no OS installed.

I'm trying to install Finale 2008. The installer shows both the 250 drive and RAID drive icons, and asks me to select a destination drive. But, when I select the RAID drive it tells me that Finale can't be installed on the RAID drive.

The questions are these: Is finale not allowing this because there is no OSX Tiger present on the RAID drive? Or is there another problem?

Is it possible to have two bootable disks on the same computer, or will it cause the computer confusion?

If it is possible to have two bootable disks, how do you select the disk you want to boot from for updates for instance?

Also, is it possible to stripe the 250HD to the already Striped 750HDs? Someone warned us it would cause the total RAID array to read as the smallest Hard Drive in the group. Is this true?

Sorry to be such a dummy, but this is my first time working with multiple drives.

 

[andysayshi]

The Finale Installer only allows installation on the currently active system drive - in your case, the 250GB solo drive. This is a restriction of Finale, not of Mac OS.

There's no reason why you can't install a separate OS on your RAID drive, then install FInale on the RAID, if you choose, but there's probably not much point. SOP is to install applications on your system drive, then use the faster RAID for recording purposes. You can move the Sample Libraries from Finale onto the RAID after installation if you want to.

To add a second OS installation, just insert your OS disk, activate the installer, Restart when prompted, and follow the instructions as to which drive you want to install to.

Once you have more than one OS installation, you choose the Startup (Boot) Disk from System Preferences/Startup DIsk. Then just restart the machine.

And as Noelie verified, the smallest drive in a striped array becomes the size of ALL the drives, so you don't want to stripe the 250GB drive with your 750s.

 

[LaloGS]

Thanks Andy & Noelie. This is what I suspected but was afraid to do without some confirmation.

 

[sheep]

OK, here's the deal: we have a MacPro Quad with a 250GB boot drive running OSX Tiger 3.4.10. And we have three more 750GB hard drives striped together in RAID disk with no OS installed.

I'm trying to install Finale 2008. The installer shows both the 250 drive and RAID drive icons, and asks me to select a destination drive. But, when I select the RAID drive it tells me that Finale can't be installed on the RAID drive.

The questions are these: Is finale not allowing this because there is no OSX Tiger present on the RAID drive? Or is there another problem?

Is it possible to have two bootable disks on the same computer, or will it cause the computer confusion?

If it is possible to have two bootable disks, how do you select the disk you want to boot from for updates for instance?

Also, is it possible to stripe the 250HD to the already Striped 750HDs? Someone warned us it would cause the total RAID array to read as the smallest Hard Drive in the group. Is this true?

Sorry to be such a dummy, but this is my first time working with multiple drives.

You can have OSX installed on as many drives as you want. Remember that Apple applications must stay in the applications folder on the startup drive. When you do a software update it only updates the current start up disk. Then you can go to system preferences >startup disk and select the other drive and restart. Finale may not want to install on a drive with no OS on it. If you have space on your 250 I would put it there and keep the raid array for data. Or it could be something to do with raid. I don't have any knowledge of that so if you are still having problems, note it here and maybe someone else can help.

 

[LaloGS]

It seems according to an Apple tech guy in Apple's Indian call center, that I can place an OS on the RAID array and also place Finale on there with it without problems. I'm waiting for a DVD of Fimale to be shipped from the US since the CDrom version they sent first would not install on either HD.

Apparently there is a problem in their Garritan Instruments packag (disc #2) that stalls out at 73%, causing errors in the installation. The Finale tech guy who seems to be in the US, says the DVD version doesn't have a problem. We'll see. . .

 

[tornZorak]

It seems according to an Apple tech guy in Apple's Indian call center, that I can place an OS on the RAID array and also place Finale on there with it without problems. I'm waiting for a DVD of Fimale to be shipped from the US since the CDrom version they sent first would not install on either HD.

Apparently there is a problem in their Garritan Instruments packag (disc #2) that stalls out at 73%, causing errors in the installation. The Finale tech guy who seems to be in the US, says the DVD version doesn't have a problem. We'll see. . .

I think you might have missed the point above. Why do you want to install Finale on the RAID array? Having the software on the RAID array will only indirectly make things faster because the default location for projects may be in a directory associated with Finale (and hence on the RAID array). Similarly if you boot from the RAID array then you'll be using the RAID array for everything.

However all of that is alot of extra work. What you really want to do is install Finale (doesn't matter where) and then ensure that all projects and temp directories as set on the RAID array. The video and working files need the extra speed of the RAID array, not the Finale software nor the OS.

Also note, if your not using a RAID-5 array (likely since it's only a 3 disk array), then the failure of a single drive will blow the entire RAID array. That means that if your boot from the RAID array a single disk failure will effectively erase everything - OS, Finale, and all of your projects. However keeping the OS/Finale on the 250g disk and the projects on the RAID array spreads the risk out.

 

[LaloGS]

I think you might have missed the point above. Why do you want to install Finale on the RAID array? Having the software on the RAID array will only indirectly make things faster because the default location for projects may be in a directory associated with Finale (and hence on the RAID array). Similarly if you boot from the RAID array then you'll be using the RAID array for everything.

However all of that is alot of extra work. What you really want to do is install Finale (doesn't matter where) and then ensure that all projects and temp directories as set on the RAID array. The video and working files need the extra speed of the RAID array, not the Finale software nor the OS.

Also note, if your not using a RAID-5 array (likely since it's only a 3 disk array), then the failure of a single drive will blow the entire RAID array. That means that if your boot from the RAID array a single disk failure will effectively erase everything - OS, Finale, and all of your projects. However keeping the OS/Finale on the 250g disk and the projects on the RAID array spreads the risk out.

Thanks TornZorak, that is exactly what we have settled on with the set up.