[Westfoto]

I am looking to add a SCSI RAID to my system of a Dual 533 G4. I would like to be able to use this RAID in the future with OSX and I have heard that there is a rumor to the addition with RAID support in OSX, any truth to this??

I have seen info on both the ATTO Ultra3 and the Adaptec 39160 cards for Ultra3 (160). I am wondering why everyone is leaning towards the ATTO card. Is the ATTO card that much better? I did notice that the Adaptec card is a few years old on there site it says G3 or better. And the PDF file has a date of 1999 on it. Are either company working on drivers for OSX?

Is it feasible to put 3 drive and one tape backup in one case? The RAID and the backup in one so as to cut back on cases and power cords and SCSI connections.

I was looking at 3 36GB drives and one VXA Tape drive with one of the above cards to drive it. This would be in a sepparate encloser.

Thanks for the help in advance.
West

[Nimisys]

don't know about this card in particular but i know abit about RAID lvl 0,1 and 5

if you want perofrmance and no backup within the array then sure you could array the 3 and leave the backup out of it.... 99% of hardware contrioller support it. If you want backup then you could grab 2 40gig drvs and an 80gig and do Raid 5 and then back up to the tape... unfortunitly i don't think you could \include the tape with in the array as it would kill the hdd perforamce, but i may be wrong

[nana2]

Originally posted by Nimisys:
<STRONG>don't know about this card in particular but i know abit about RAID lvl 0,1 and 5

if you want perofrmance and no backup within the array then sure you could array the 3 and leave the backup out of it.... 99% of hardware contrioller support it. If you want backup then you could grab 2 40gig drvs and an 80gig and do Raid 5 and then back up to the tape... unfortunitly i don't think you could \include the tape with in the array as it would kill the hdd perforamce, but i may be wrong</STRONG>

It looks like you are talking about IDE drives with this 40 and 80GB drive sizes?

If the VXA-1 tape drive is not an LVD model then when you hook it up to the same cable as the LVD hard drives everything on the chain will drop back to SE speeds.

If you go for RAID 5 then you will kill your write speeds (less than 10MB/sec best case). Also the ATTO Raid cards are only capable of RAID 0 and RAID 1. The Adaptec 39160 is not a RAID controller, only a SCSI controller. Also be extremely wary of the Adaptec RAID cards (2100, 3200, 3400) they all have been proven to be crap performers.

[Westfoto]

I was looking at doing this W/SCSI drives and the VXA is a LVD-SCSI drive. I have noticed that the Adaptec 39160 card comes with a copy of Softraid to use with it. Has anyone had experiance with Softraid?

Thanks