Re: New Thunderbolt Drive...Which Config/Format should I use?

Hello. I am hooking up a new G-RAID Thunderbolt Drive. I was wondering which RAID config should I set this up with my FCP Studio 7 on my iMac.

The paperwork included says..." Your G-RAID with Thunderbolt has been preconfigured as a Striped RAID set (RAID 0) and formatted to HFS+ Journaled for Mac. Thanks...

Is the HFS+ Journaled correct for FCP Studio 7 on my iMac?

Phil

Yes, that's fine. There's no redundancy but you'll get some good read and write speeds with that setup.

It depends how many disks are inside. If you have only two then Raid 0, but an enclosure with multiple disks inside could be configured as Raid 5 which means no data loss in the event of one disk failing - at least that's the theory.

Media drives are not journaled like the boot drive, but if you have already done it and the drive is in use you can turn journalling off in the disk utility.

How does one turn off journaling? It's either "journaled" or "Journaled case sensitive".

I could use help too on how to turn off journaling...My new G-RAID drive has not be used or installed yet if that helps...Thanks...

Apple has hidden the Journaling option. To get to Journaling, launch Disk Utility and select the drive on the left.

Hold down the Option key and then click on File. The Journaling option will now appear.

--ken

Is it better for me to reformat my new (and unused thunderbolt drive)? or will turning off the journaling do the same thing. Thanks...

Phil

On the face of it there's no difference but as turning off journaling would be a system preference and as such could revert to journaled in the event of a crash. I would re-initialize the drive as not journaled so that it is set in stone. It only takes a few seconds.

Seems I cannot disable journaling on my G-Raid 8TB RAID 0 drive. How much of a performance boost would I get if I could?

Hi Joe, If you go to the disk utility, select your drive, then in the file menu at the top of the screen alt+click and you will see disable journaling in the drop down menu.

I'm not sure about the speed difference but with journaling on the system first writes a journal record before writing the data to disk so there will obviously be a speed hit, however small. I have always followed convention by initializing media drives as not journaled to avoid any problems. As I said previously, initializing a drive as not journaled might be preferable to disabling it later on as a system preference. Moving a drive which has journaling turned off as a system preference might behave differently on another computer because the journaling on/off command isn't burned into the disk itself at creation. I could be wrong about that though, but better safe than sorry.

I just checked, I can enable journaling on my G-Speed Q from the file menu, so I would have thought that you would be able to disable it.

Just to be clear...You're saying it's better to re-format my Thunderbolt drive as non-journaled (as opposed to just turning journaling off)...I've never done a reformat before...Is that done in DiskUtility also...Thanks.

Uptown, it depends which type of hardware you are using. In my case I'm using eSata through a Highpoint Rocketraid to a G-Speed Q Raid 5, which does complicate things a little. For my G-Raid dual disk enclosures I format/initialize in the normal way with the disk utility.

Best to read your instruction manual and be aware that you will lose the custom G-Tech drive icon when you initialize the disk. However, the icons are supplied on the software CD with instructions on how to use them to make your disk appear on the desktop with it's G-Tech icon rather than the generic one. It's something you will need to do from time to time anyway so don't worry.

OK thanks...I am using a 6TB G-RAID thunderbolt dual disk enclosure......