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Newest blog posts

2022-06-15 Apple Mac Studio M1 Ultra Up And Running

2021-02-23 TESTED: OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual USB-C Enclosure, RAID-0 Striping Performance

2020-05-19 OWC ThunderBay 8: Speed vs Transfer size, RAID-0 vs Fault Tolerant RAID-5

2020-05-19 OWC ThunderBay 8: Speed Across Volume Capacity, RAID-0 Stripe vs Fault-Tolerant RAID-5

2020-05-11 OWC ThunderBay 8: Installing Hard Drives and SSDs, Plus Info and Specifications

2020-01-05 OWC Mercury Accelsior M42 PCIe SSD: Running Two of Them Independently — Awesomely Fast (but don’t stripe 8 blades yet)

2019-01-26 OWC Thunderbay 6 vs OWC Thunderbay 4: what if 5 Drives Are Used for RAID-0 instead of just four?

2019-01-24 TESTED: OWC Thunderbay 6, RAID-0 and RAID-5 Performance

2018-01-21 2TB LaCie Bolt: Uses Two 'Blades' So Can Run as RAID-0 Stripe (default) or RAID-1 Mirror or Two Independent Volumes

2017-05-08 OWC Accelsior Pro Q: Rock Solid and Blazingly Fast

View all related blog posts...

Most recent pages at other diglloyd sites:

See also 5 pages at diglloyd.com

2019-02-18 Delayed For Days: Hard Drive Horrors

2015-11-11 Big, Fast and Fault-Tolerant Storage for Photographers and Videographers: 8TB Drives Singly or as RAID-4, RAID-5, RAID-10, RAID-0

2015-10-16 Big Fault-Tolerant Storage for Photographers: Deal on the OWC Thunderbay 4

2010-02-11 OWC Mercury Extreme SSD as fast RAID-0 stripe 4 drives

2009-02-12 Booted off striped RAID-0 Solid State drives

RAID

Various types of RAID setups..

  1. About RAID
  2. Speed: RAID-5 vs RAID-0
  3. How to Create a Software RAID-01
  4. RAID 0 Striping
  5. How to Create a Software RAID-0
  6. RAID-4 / RAID-5 and RAID 6 for Performance and Reliability
  7. Step-by-step to setting up RAID on Mac OS X

Software RAID Performance with SoftRAID 5

High performance RAID-0, RAID-1, RAID-5, RAID-1+0..

  1. RAID-0 Performance with SoftRAID 5
  2. SoftRAID RAID-4 / RAID-5 Performance with Heavy CPU load

Software RAID with SoftRAID

Making software RAID volumes..

  1. Walkthrough: creating a RAID-0 Stripe in SoftRAID

Promise Pegasus J4 Thunderbolt 4-Drive Enclosure

SSDs or hard drives for fast single-drive or RAID volumes in a portable enclosure..

  1. Promise Pegasus J4 — Initializing Volumes
  2. Promise Pegasus J4 — SSD Speed (Incompressible)
  3. Promise Pegasus J4 — SSD Speed (Fast Hard Drives)
  4. Promise Pegasus J4 — Recommended Configuration

Thunderbolt peripherals

Reviews of Thunderbolt products..

  1. LaCie Bolt 2TB Thunderbolt 3 SSD
  2. FirmTek ThunderTek/PX Q6G Thunderbolt to 4-Port eSATA
  3. OWC 30 Meter Optical Thunderbolt Cable: Does Length Matter for Performance?

OWC Thunderbay 4 Mini

High performance with 2.5-inch hard drives or SSDs..

  1. Sequential Speed vs Transfer Size with SSDs
  2. Sequential Speed of Large Transfers with SSDs
  3. Thunderbay Mini with SSDs: Incompressible Data
  4. CPU Usage for RAID-0 vs RAID-4 or RAID-5
  5. Real World Throughput for RAID-0 vs RAID-4 vs RAID-5
  6. Outrageous Speed with 8 SSDs in Dual Thunderbay 4 Minis

OWC 40TB SSD (in Thunderbay 4 Mini)

Ultra high flat-line performanc in 40 Terabyte capacity.

  1. OWC 40TB SSD
  2. OWC 40TB SSD: RAID Setup
  3. OWC 40TB SSD: RAID-0 and RAID-4 Sustained Transfer Performance
  4. OWC 40TB SSD: RAID-0 Transfer Size Performance

OWC Thunderbay 6

Six bay storage solution with RAID-0/1/4/5/10 or non-RAID..

  1. OWC Thunderbay 6: RAID-0 Performance
  2. OWC Thunderbay 6 vs Thunderbay 4: RAID-0 Performance Options
  3. OWC Thunderbay 6: RAID-5 Performance

OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dock

Two-Drive Hardware RAID plus USB ports, SD slot, video, gigabit.

  1. OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dock: Overview
  2. OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dock: Speed vs Transfer Size

OWC ThunderBay 8

Eight bay storage solution with RAID-0/1/4/5/10 or non-RAID..

  1. OWC ThunderBay 8: Overview
  2. OWC ThunderBay 8: Examples of Various Configurations using SoftRAID
  3. OWC ThunderBay 8: RAID-0 vs RAID5 vs RAID10 Performance
  4. OWC ThunderBay 8: Speed Across Volume Capacity, RAID-0 vs RAID-5
  5. OWC ThunderBay 8: Speed vs Transfer size, RAID-0 vs RAID-5

OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual USB-C

2-bay storage solution with hardware RAID options.

  1. OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual: Performance with 36TB RAID-0

OWC Thunderbay FLEX 8

Eight bays for HDD, SSD plus PCIe Card and Ports.

  1. OWC Thunderbay FLEX 8: Overview
  2. OWC Thunderbay FLEX 8: Configuration Possibilities
  3. OWC Thunderbay FLEX 8: HDD Speed Across Volume Capacity, RAID-0 vs RAID-5
  4. OWC Thunderbay FLEX 8: HDD Speed vs Transfer Size
  5. OWC Thunderbay FLEX 8: SSD Speed Across Volume Capacity
  6. OWC Thunderbay FLEX 8: SSD Speed vs Transfer Size

OWC Thunderblade SSD

Ultra high speed robust pro-grade external SSD..

  1. OWC Thunderblade 16TB Thunderbolt 3 SSD: Double the Fun

OWC Thunderbay IV / 4 Thunderbolt Enclosure

High performance with hard drives or SSDs..

  1. OWC Thunderbay 4 with Four OWC SSDs as RAID-0 Stripe
  2. RAID-0, RAID-5, RAID 1+0 Performance (SoftRAID, Thunderbolt v1)
  3. RAID-0 with 4/3/2 Drives (SoftRAID, Thunderbolt v1)

OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual Thunderbolt / USB3

Dual-drive Thunderbolt + USB3 user-selectable RAID..

  1. Overview of OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual
  2. Performance as RAID-0 Stripe
  3. Thunderbolt vs USB3 Performance as RAID-0 Stripe
  4. Striping 4 Drives In Two OWC Mercury Elite Pro Duals

CalDigit T3 3-Drive Thunderbolt Enclosure

Three drives in a high-grade enclosure..

  1. CalDigit T3: 3-HDD RAID-0 Stripe
  2. CalDigit T3: 3-HDD RAID-5 (Striping with Parity)
  3. CalDigit T3: 3-HDD RAID-5 vs RAID-0

Setting Up Your Mac

Suggestions for setting up your Mac for performance and data safety..

  1. High Performance Mac Configuration

Upgrading Your Mac

When and Why to Upgrade Your Mac..

  1. Case Study: Upgrade a 2010 MacBook Pro for Photoshop Performance

Optimizing Photoshop CS5 Performance

The best hardware and configuration for Photoshop CS5..

  1. Influence of Drive Speed on CS5 Big File Save Speed

Optimizing Photoshop CS4 Performance

How to configure a Mac to maximize Photoshop CS3/CS4 performance..

  1. How to Configure Photoshop CS4 for best performance
  2. Optimizing Photoshop CS4 on Apple MacBook Pro With Solid State Drives
  3. Using a RAM disk as a Photoshop CS4 scratch disk
  4. Photoshop CS4 Performance Conclusions and Recommendations

Optimizing Other Photography Software

Speedups for working with images..

  1. Optimizing PTGui Pro Panoramas

Choosing and Configuring a Mac

An in-depth look at how to find the right Mac setup for you.

  1. Mac Boot Drive Dogma
  2. My Mac Pro: An Example

How to Buy / What to Buy

Nuts and bolts of buying a Mac, and recommended extras..

  1. Buyer's Guide: Multi-interface External Enclosures

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

Special Report: Upgrade Now or Wait?.

  1. Memory and Drives for Snow Leopard

Fast and Reliable Hardware RAID

How fast and reliable can RAID-0, RAID-5 and RAID-6 go using an 8-drive mini-SAS box and a hardware RAID card?.

  1. Choosing RAID-0, RAID-5, RAID-6
  2. Atto/iStoragePro Test Results for RAID-0 Striping
  3. Atto/iStoragePro Test Results for RAID-6 Striping + Dual Parity

Apple Mac Pro Westmere 4/6/8/12-Core (Aug 2010)

Choosing among 4/6/8/12 cores, and is 2010 Mac Pro faster or better than 2009 model?.

  1. Mac Pro Westmere Digital Camera RAW File Processing Speed (Bibble Pro)

OWC Mercury Accelsior PCIe RAID SSD

Ultra-fast solid state storage with hardware RAID for a Mac Pro in a PCIe slot..

  1. Mercury Accelsior 'E2' Upgrade Process (Module Swap)
  2. Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD — Setup and Configuration
  3. Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD — Speed (Triple RAID-0 Stripe)

OWC Mercury Electra 960GB 3G SSD

Huge capacity in a speedy SATA SSD..

  1. OWC Mercury Electra 960GB — Introduction
  2. OWC Mercury Electra 960GB — RAID-0 Stripe Performance

Solid State Drives, Various

SSDs and thumb drives..

  1. OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual Mini USB-C
  2. 2TB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, Singly and in 8TB RAID-0

OWC SSDs, Various

Various SATA and USB SSDs..

  1. Photoshop CS5 diglloydHuge Benchmark — OWC 480GB 6G SSD on Mac Pro 3G Port
  2. Sustained Transfer Speed — OWC 480GB 6G SSD on 2010 Mac Pro 3G Ports
  3. OWC 1TB Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD (Late 2015), Single and RAID-0

OWC Mercury Electra 6G 960GB SSD

Fast 6 Gbps high capacity SSD..

  1. OWC Mercury Electra 960GB — RAID-5, RAID-4, RAID-0, RAID 1+0

OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 3G Solid State Drives

Fast and durable, enterprise-grade solid state drives..

  1. Introduction to Mercury Extreme Pro 3G
  2. Mercury Extreme Pro 3G RAID-0 Stripe Performance
  3. Mercury Extreme Pro 3G RAID-0 Stripe Performance
  4. Comparing the Mercury Extreme Pro 3G 400GB to 200GB Model

SPECIAL REPORT: Real World SSD Performance

Many brands of solid state drives put on a good show when new, but some degrade with use..

  1. New vs Seasoned OWC Mercury Pro 240GB
  2. Severe Duty: OWC Extreme Pro vs Intel 160GB G2

Solid State Drives (SSD)

Choosing and using solid state drives..

  1. Crucial 128GB solid state drive (SSD)
  2. Intel X25-E SSD

Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch Quad-Core (June 2012)

Apple’s 2012 MacBook Pro (non Retina)..

  1. 2012 MBP 15-inch — Photoshop CS6 Speed with Various SSDs

OWC Portable Dual-Drive RAID-0 or RAID-1 Mini Enclosures

Dual-drive externals for travel or compact backup..

  1. Performance on Mac Pro with eSATA
  2. Performance on Mac Pro with Firewire 800

Drives and Expansion and Various

Reviews of various hardware and software..

  1. OWC Mercury Elite Al-PRO QX2
  2. Data Robotics Drobo
  3. Pimp My MacBook Pro

Desktop Hard Drives

Performance and use..

  1. Hitachi 4TB Deskstar 7K4000 Hard Drive
  2. Toshiba 3TB Hard Drive (HDKPC08/DT01ACAxx)
  3. Toshiba 4TB Enterprise Hard Drive (MG03ACA400)
  4. Toshiba 4TB MG03ACA400 vs 3TB DT01ACA300: Is Cheaper Faster?
  5. Hitachi 3TB Deskstar 7K3000
  6. Western Digital RE4 2TB Enterprise Grade 'RAID Edition' HDD
  7. Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB hard drive
  8. Western Digital RE4-GP 2TB
  9. Low-power 2TB consumer hard drives

HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8

Outstanding high-capacity enterprise hard drive..

  1. Using High Capacity Drives in a RAID-0 Stripe Volume
  2. HGST Ultrastar He8 Performance: RAID-0 Striping
  3. HGST Ultrastar He8 Performance: RAID-0 vs RAID-4 / RAID-5 Compared 3/4/5/6/7/8 Drives

Older storage interfaces

Modern Macs use USB3 and Thunderbolt..

  1. Introduction to Storage Performance

Blog posts

2022

2022-06-15 Apple Mac Studio M1 Ultra Up And Running

2021

2021-02-23 TESTED: OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual USB-C Enclosure, RAID-0 Striping Performance

2020

2020-05-19 OWC ThunderBay 8: Speed vs Transfer size, RAID-0 vs Fault Tolerant RAID-5

2020-05-19 OWC ThunderBay 8: Speed Across Volume Capacity, RAID-0 Stripe vs Fault-Tolerant RAID-5

2020-05-11 OWC ThunderBay 8: Installing Hard Drives and SSDs, Plus Info and Specifications

2020-01-05 OWC Mercury Accelsior M42 PCIe SSD: Running Two of Them Independently — Awesomely Fast (but don’t stripe 8 blades yet)

2019

2019-01-26 OWC Thunderbay 6 vs OWC Thunderbay 4: what if 5 Drives Are Used for RAID-0 instead of just four?

2019-01-24 TESTED: OWC Thunderbay 6, RAID-0 and RAID-5 Performance

2018

2018-01-21 2TB LaCie Bolt: Uses Two 'Blades' So Can Run as RAID-0 Stripe (default) or RAID-1 Mirror or Two Independent Volumes

2017

2017-05-08 OWC Accelsior Pro Q: Rock Solid and Blazingly Fast

2017-04-13 OWC Accelsior Pro Q vs Accelsior: Real World Throughput

2016

2016-11-25 TESTED: OWC 40TB Thunderbay 4 Mini SSD with RAID-0 Stripe and RAID-4 Fault Tolerance

2016-11-25 TESTED: OWC 40TB SSD Sequential Transfer Speed

2016-11-23 OWC 40TB Thunderbay 4 Mini SSD

2016-04-11 OWC Announces SoftRAID 5.5: allows users to convert Apple RAID volumes to SoftRAID

2015

2015-12-19 TESTED: 2TB Samsung 850 EVO, Singly and RAID-0

2015-12-17 TESTED: 1TB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD

2015-12-12 Walkthrough: How to make a RAID Stripe Using SoftRAID 5.1

2015-12-10 TESTED: 1TB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD in Thunderbay 4 Mini, RAID-0 Stripe Configuration

2015-11-17 HGST 8TB Ultrastar He8: RAID-4, RAID-0, RAID-5 Scalability

2014

2014-12-06 OWC Mercury Electra 6G 960GB SSD: RAID-0 Striping vs RAID-5 vs RAID-4 vs RAID-10

2014-11-25 RAID-0 vs RAID-4 or RAID-5: Does the CPU Usage Matter?

2014-11-23 RAID-0 vs RAID-4 or RAID-5: Does the CPU Usage Matter?

2014-11-22 RAID: Performance vs Transfer Size

2014-08-04 SoftRAID 5 Goes Final: High Performance RAID 5, RAID 1+0, RAID-0, RAID-1

2014-07-25 Four SSDs in OWC Thunderbay 4 test with RAID-0 and RAID-5

2014-07-11 RAID-0 Scalability with Thunderbolt 2: Separate Bus or Daisy Chain?

2014-07-08 RAID-0 Scalability: 60TB and 12 Hard Drives in Three OWC Thunderbay 4 Enclosures

2014-06-08 SoftRAID 5: Performance with RAID-0, RAID-5, RAID-1+0

2013

2013-07-13 Defrag or Upgrade to Faster/Larger? (Lightroom, Aperture, etc)

2013-06-13 Pegasus J4: One Part of the Switchover Solution for the new Mac Pro?

2013-01-11 Fast Hard Drive: Toshiba HGST 3TB (HDKPC08/DT01ACAxx) with RAID-0 Stripe Results

2012

2012-07-25 Why I NEED 80GB or 96GB Memory in my Mac Pro: Photoshop CS6 Performance

2012-06-22 OWC 960GB Mercury Electra 3G SSD — Breakthrough SSD Capacity!

2012-04-11 4TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K4000 Hard Drive in 3-way RAID-0 Stripe

2012-04-04 4TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K4000 Hard Drive for 16TB Inside a Mac Pro

2011

2011-07-04 OWC 480GB in 2010 Mac Pro, Single SSD, and RAID-0 of 2 or 3 SSDs

2011-06-07 The All-SSD Mac Pro

2011-05-07 Save Big Photoshop Files 20X Faster!

2011-05-07 How fast are Four Hitachi 7K3000 3TB Hard Drives in a RAID-0 Stripe?

2010

2010-08-09 How to Mitigate 2010 Mac Pro 4/6-core Memory Limits

2010-08-08 My iMac 27" is Off to OWC for the MPG Pro One Upgrade — What I Ordered

2010-07-11 OWC Mercury Extreme Pro RE 400GB Solid State Drive (SSD)

2010-06-25 Converting to a Larger Time Machine volume, and a Faster One Too!

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