It helps protect your data by writing it to two drives rather than to one-so if one drive fails, you still have all your data on the other. Each drive holds the same data one mirrors the contents of the other. Whether the RAID shares or duplicates data is determined by itsĭisk Utility supports two RAID levels-Mirrored RAID Set (RAID Level 1) and Striped RAID Set (RAID Level 0)-as well as something called a Concatenated Disk Set (also known as JBOD, or Just a Bunch of Disks).Īt its most basic, a mirrored RAID is composed of two hard drives. In a stock Mac Pro, you create a RAID by installing at least one additional drive and then using Apple’s Disk Utility to configure the drives. The Mac Pro makes it a lot easier to implement on the desktop. RAIDhas been common on servers for years. In other words, instead of storing all your data on just one drive, you store it on several. But what exactly is a RAID, and how do you set one up? Let me explain.Īs the name implies, a RAID is two or more hard drives configured to share or duplicate data.

What can you do with the Mac Pro’s extra drive bays? One of the coolest things is to fill them with the highest-capacity hard drives you can find and then configure those drives in a RAID (Redundant Array of Independent [or Off the shelf, the Power Mac G5 can accommodate just two hard drives.

One of the biggest differences (after the Mac Pro’s Intel Xeon processor) is the number of internal drive slots each Mac has. The Mac Pro and the previous top-of-the-line desktop Mac, the Power Mac G5, may look alike on the outside-cheese-grater exterior, huge brushed-aluminum handles, and USB and FireWire ports up front-but inside, they’re entirely different beasts.

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