04-12-2010, 07:18 AM
Trouble wrote:
[quote=Doc]
Is your Mini one with Intel graphics or with Nvidia graphics? If yours uses Intel graphics then an upgrade might be smart. If yours has Nvidia graphics or if you buy a current Mini then I suggest that you connect a fast drive via FireWire 800 instead of RAIDing.
I have the 2009 model with nvidia graphics. I already have a drobo on the FW. I just read a review and striping the drives give a huge transfer increase; well above a single FW800 drive.
Your experience with the Drobo is not a good indicator. They are notoriously slow.
With a fast drive on FW 800 the real-world difference is probably 5-15MB/s at the most and with overhead and fragmentation, there's little or no practical difference at all on a Mini.
If you really need to tweak it that carefully for maximum speed, you should probably be looking at Mac Pros, not Minis.