[Tenacious Dyl]

Hey all, I just got a brand new 17" MacBook Pro, it is everything I wanted, minus storage space of course.

I do a lot of heavy video work, often with many different versions of each movie. Single projects easily reach 100-200 GBS each, and lately I've been hired for multiple projects.

As it stands, I have many larger f/w externals (each at 250, 300, or 500 gbs). I could raid them, but its just such a mess to have all those drives on my desk / shelves, and worrying about taking all 3, 5, etc in the raid set along when I only need one.

I've been looking around for a "box" that would house, ideally, up to eight or ten, 3.5" drives, and relay back to my MacBook Pro with one single Firewire 400 or 800 cable. The box would either RAID them itself, or I would use the software RAID in Disk Utility.

So, my questions are, have any of you had experiences with such "boxes", what do you suggest, what should I stay away from? And with approximately $2,000 what is the most kick-ass, (kick-ass = speed x GBS) set-up that could be made?

Also, if I got an express card for the MacBook Pro's slot, say with firewire 800 (if it exists yet!) would I have a speed gain with RAID 0'ing 4 drives on the f/w port on the MacBook Pro, and 4 drives on the port on the Express Card (assuming I have 2, four drive boxes) or would it be the same end result as all 8 on a single port?

[Yose]

What about an external SATA card for your Macbook Pro... wouldn't that be faster?

[tooki]

http://www.wiebetech.com/products/rt5x2.php looks like just what you need.

tooki

[Tenacious Dyl]

Tooki: Thanks! That is a perfect solution, it couldn't be more spot-on with what I am looking for.

Now I just have to deal with it costing about $2,850 with no drives in it.... Perhaps a few more paycheck cycles

[tooki]

Hehehehe.

I wish that real hardware disk arrays like that were cheaper. I'd recommend them to clients all the time if they were.

tooki

[spice003]

http://cooldrives.com/usbenclosures.html they have a lot of stuff, click on categories on the side.

[QuadG5Man]

So how long until there's storage like that in my palm? That will rock.

5 years imho.