Not overly familiar with the macs, but as long as it has a real usb3 or higher port, I'd consider something like this externally to your 2 internal spinners, usb 3+ to m.2/nvme drive adapter: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item= 9SIA54G3RY3726&cm_re=m.2_usb-_-9SIA54G3RY3726-_-Product Usb3 is 3-4 gigabit practical speed in theory and should sustain decent enough i/o to make use of that. If it's new enough to have a thunderbolt 3/usb3.1 connection, those are supposedly 10 gigabit capable for roughly 2x the throughput. Maybe Eric should head to west texas and sue them for infringement, with Oyen Tech. ;) This looked nifty too for thunderbolt3/usb3.1... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817245003&cm_re=m.2_usb-_-17-245-003-_-Product -mb On Tue, Dec 20, 2016 at 1:55 PM, Stephen Partington wrote: > I have done it with my LVMcache based solution without issue. Currently am > running that on a Mac mini server If i could get a pair of spinners in > there with an SSD cache i would. > > > On Tue, Dec 20, 2016 at 1:36 PM, Michael Butash > wrote: > >> How does one handle redundant disks *properly* or *officially* with EFI? >> >> First/Last time I dealt with EFI was an asus that had 2x SSD's (factory >> raid 0[!]) that I intended to raid 1 for redundancy vs. performance. It >> had no legacy boot option at all (shame, asus), so I was forced to work >> with it. I eventually got my recipe up on it with mdadm, crypto, and lvm >> with ubuntu after weeks of fiddling with it, but never really figured out a >> better way to deal with efi partition. I had setup a cronjob to rsync the >> efi directory, never really tested the actual failure scenario and/or >> recovery however before I gave up on the laptop otherwise (and job). >> >> Maybe that is/was good enough, just wasn't sure how well the efi bios >> would switch up disks like that, as something at the time made me believe >> it wouldn't. I've read efi is somewhat fakeraid aware, perhaps that's an >> option since mdadm works with fakeraids too... >> >> Surely I'm not the only one to do redundant disks in desktops, but do >> seem to be one of an odd few. >> >> -mb >> >> On Tue, Dec 20, 2016 at 12:06 PM, Kevin Fries >> wrote: >> >>> I suspect the issue was more with UDev and those fancy new drives. I >>> just wiped then installed Arch on a brand new HP laptop with GPT, zero >>> issues. I especially like the lack of a separate /boot partition by >>> reusing the EFI/GPT boot sector. >>> >>> Personally, my install was very straightforward and stable as hell. >>> >>> Kevin >>> >>> On Dec 20, 2016 9:13 AM, "Michael Butash" wrote: >>> >>>> I agree, this is why I keep separate /usr partitions, both to allow for >>>> growth, and to monitor my growth. Another weird thing Arch has such a >>>> difficult time booting with a separate /usr, more like the dev's ass-u-me >>>> again no one will *ever* do this... >>>> >>>> I started doing it as a means of checks for watching growth over the >>>> years. In the old days of 8.04, usually a 4gb partition for /usr was fine, >>>> and less than a gig for actual root (/). Now I fill /usr with at least 6gb >>>> of data on install it seems, 7-8gb is more the norm. >>>> >>>> Use of GPT is/was really trying to keep up with tech, where early days >>>> of SSD, fdisk was terrible about alignment, where most things can and still >>>> do say to use GPT. Just no one tells you it is inherently broken still on >>>> most platforms to consider booting off of. >>>> >>>> I'd be more inclined to try EFI, but I'm fond of consistent raid >>>> approaches, even for boot partitions, where the inflexible FatFS nature of >>>> EFI partition just rubs me the wrong way as it can't be made natively >>>> redundant like I can with /boot being on mdraid partitions happily booting >>>> linux otherwise. Curious what others do with redundancy around EFI desktop >>>> drives... >>>> >>>> Even without another shed of M$ on here, it still finds a way to screw >>>> things up. >>>> >>>> -mb >>>> >>>> On Tue, Dec 20, 2016 at 12:09 AM, Steve Litt >>> > wrote: >>>> >>>>> On Mon, 19 Dec 2016 23:17:38 -0700 >>>>> Michael Butash wrote: >>>>> >>>>> > I really had no idea GPT was such an anomaly still. Everything I >>>>> > read was like "just do it!". Not. >>>>> >>>>> At this point in time, laptop hard disks still aren't big enough to >>>>> require EFI, and desktops have multiple disks. So what I do on laptops >>>>> that can still do MBR is MBR format the hard disk. >>>>> >>>>> With my daily driver desktop, with a 4TB disk, and a 3TB disk, and a >>>>> 256GB SSD, I MBR boot to the SSD, which also contains the whole /usr >>>>> and /etc tree for easy bootability in these days of symlinked /usr. So >>>>> I get the advantages of GPT on my large disks, the simple booting of >>>>> MBR on my SSD: It works fast and beautifully. >>>>> >>>>> SteveT >>>>> >>>>> Steve Litt >>>>> December 2016 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century >>>>> http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21 >>>>> --------------------------------------------------- >>>>> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org >>>>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: >>>>> http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> --------------------------------------------------- >>>> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org >>>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: >>>> http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss >>>> >>> >>> --------------------------------------------------- >>> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org >>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: >>> http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss >>> >> >> >> --------------------------------------------------- >> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org >> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: >> http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss >> > > > > -- > A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from > rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button. > > Stephen > > > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: > http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss >