Apple Pro Training Series. Optimizing Your Final Cut Pro System. A Technical Guide to Real-World Post-Production

Installing/Updating Storage Drivers and Software

A few more software installations are necessary, in some cases, before you proceed to volume creation. Perform these steps only if you have the applicable scenarios.

ATTO Card Driver Updates

This section is necessary only if you've installed an ATTO SCSI HBA in your G5. This card will need an updated driver, and perhaps a firmware upgrade as well, all of which you can download from www.attotech.com/software. After a briefly annoying free registration game, you'll be able to navigate to the latest drivers and firmware for your card. After you download them, double-click the installer packages and restart the machine for each one.

SATA HBA Drivers

In some cases, you'll need to install drivers for your SATA HBA, which either came with your card or can be found on the manufacturer's Web site. A restart will be required after you install the drivers.

Cooking an Xserve RAID

If you've decided to use an Apple Xserve RAID for your storage, the good news is that it's probably configured straight out of the box for video usage. Any size Xserve RAID (for 4, 7, or 14 drives) has its drives preconfigured as a RAID 5, which then either need to be initialized as a single volume (with the 4- or 7-drive configuration) or striped together to further increase performance (with the 14-drive configuration).

If the RAID is in fact just out of its box, it will need to be plugged in (using both cords), turned on (with the power button in the back), and "cooked." It must be left running for up to 36 hours (really) for a sector-by-sector drive verification process. When all of the blue lights on the front of the box turn off, you can power off the unit by holding down its power button for a few seconds. You can then move on to the following steps.

Other Xserve RAID Preparations

The Xserve RAID controller firmware might need an upgrade, so use the RAID Admin program (usually located in /Applications/Server/) that came with your Xserve RAID to connect to it via an Ethernet cable, find out its firmware version, and update it if need be.

Installation of SoftRAID (If Necessary)

The popular SoftRAID software, mentioned previously, will give you slightly better performance than Disk Utility for a software-striped array, or to stripe together the two controllers of an Xserve RAID. If you have chosen to use SoftRAID, install the software at this point. We won't cover the use of this app in this lesson, so consult the documentation that came with the software to RAID your devices together.