How can I make the fastest possible volume on HDDs by using the beginning of the disks only?

If you are creating a stripe volume for editing uncompressed digital video footage, there are several things you can do to maximize its performance.

If the volume uses disks with rotating media (and not SSDs), you should create the volume with only the first 30% of each disk. You can do this by initializing each disk with SoftRAID and then creating your new stripe volume. In the SoftRAID application new volume window, click the Max Size button to see the maximum size that you can create. Then enter a value which is 30% of this as the size of your new volume.

You should also shutdown your Mac each evening or restart it every 12 – 18 hours if you leave it on all the time. SoftRAID performs several maintenance functions when you first startup your Mac and every 24 hours thereafter. These functions include checking for new versions of SoftRAID and checking the SMART status of each disk attached to your Mac. You don’t want these functions to be performed while you are capturing or playing back video data. (You can also disable these functions in the SoftRAID preferences. They are found in the Application and Volume tabs of the Preferences window.)