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April 30, 2007

geekery

Add a RAID to your MacBook Pro

Posted Apr. 30, ’07, 9:49 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Geekery

MacBook Pro RAIDWe talked up MCE’s OptiBay way back last fall, but we had heard little of its real world use until now.

Eric Cheng, dissatisfied with paltry storage scheme on his MacBook Pro, took matters into his own Torx-wielding hands, and decided to use the OptiBay to slip an extra drive in (who really uses the optical drive anyway?). Using Xbench, Eric tested the results when the two drives had been configured by OS X’s Disk Utility into a RAID0 array (in a RAID0, the data is “striped,” with alternating bits being written to both drives; the result is usually faster disk access times, since you can use both drives simultaneously, but the downside is that if one drive fails, you lose all of your data).

Eric’s results do show an improvement in performance, though they come with a number of caveats, including louder noise from the drives, a 1mm gap at the top of the case, and some excess heat. But if you’re looking to improve speed on your MacBook Pro’s disk (or add data redundancy with a RAID1 array), this is one way to do it.

[via Macenstein]


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