[awcopus]

I'm considering a Granite 4-bay solution into which I would put 4 Seagate 80 GB 7200 RPM drives. Wondering what others here are using/have been happy with?

[awcopus]

Okay. All firewire RAIDS are software based. For more on Firewire RAIDS, check out:
http://www.firewiredirect.com/firewi...D_Primer.shtml

Firewiredirect appears to have some very appealing options for me. They're ugly but appear to have better build quality.
http://www.firewiredirect.com/firewi.../RAIDHSB.shtml

I can get a 4-bay, 480 GB RAID for $1299 from Firewire Direct; from Granite the price is $1999. Hmmmm.

Does anybody know what the difference is?

[cejones]

I could care less about RAID... what I want is an external Firewire enclosure that allows me to connect 4 IDE drives. I want maximum storage space and I don't need RAID for this.

I am thinking about building this myself... I need a power supply that can handle the power requirements for 4 IDE drives as well as power for the 4 Oxford bridge boards...

Does anyone know if the Oxford 911 boards support master and slave drives? If this is true, then I would only need two boards for the 4 IDE drives.

Any information is appreciated...

Chris
Arlington, TX

[tr]

Originally posted by cejones:
I could care less about RAID... what I want is an external Firewire enclosure that allows me to connect 4 IDE drives. I want maximum storage space and I don't need RAID for this.

I am thinking about building this myself... I need a power supply that can handle the power requirements for 4 IDE drives as well as power for the 4 Oxford bridge boards...

Does anyone know if the Oxford 911 boards support master and slave drives? If this is true, then I would only need two boards for the 4 IDE drives.

Any information is appreciated...

Chris
Arlington, TX

if you are thinking of building something, check these bridgeboards out:

http://www.granitedigital.com/catalo...idgeboards.htm

the chassis mount bridge board has a 2 drive cable option, so you can connect two drives to a bridgeboard. i'm using the single drive mount bridgeboard as an internal fw drive in my sawtooth. works great. although, in hindsight, i should have bought the one with the two drive option, as then i could connect another ide to the bridgeboard, increasing my storage! although, at about $100 to get the board and the dual drive cable, it's not that unreasonable.

actually, i was thinking of building my own 'storage box' like you--i was going to get some brdigeboards, a computer power supply, and some drives, and stick it in a box. it'd be a cheap way to have a lot of portable hd space.

tr

[awcopus]

Spoke with the guys at Granite. Interesting conversation. They received their 1394b chips from Oxford earlier this week and plan on having firewire2 solutions out in the second half of the year. The bandwidth makes firewire hardware RAIDs possible.

The guy I talked to recommended simply using their towers as JBOD, since software RAIDs aren't really going to produce benefits and have downside risks.

So I'm looking at getting a $499 dual port SMART tower or a four-port tower for $999. The SMART systems can handle the newer, larger hard drives (whereas the cooler looking and cheaper nonSMART systems are limited to 120 GB per drive).

Looking at the Western Digital 120 GB with 8MB buffer as an attractive value at $190 or its big brother, the 180 GB drive at $260.

RAID later, JBOD for now.

[cejones]

Why does the Granite enclosure cost $999 for a 4 drive tower?

You can buy 4 911 firewire bridge boards for around $140 ($35 each)
add a powersupply that can handle 4 drives... maybe $50.

Enclosure to hold it all... I would think... cheap. Doesn't have to look good... going in a closet. $50 at most.

Don't ever care about RAID. want JBOD! Don't understand why someone doesn't offer something like this.

[awcopus]

Okay, so here's my solution to my SNAFU.

SCSI RAIDs are simply way too expensive for me right now. 75 GB for $500+ ... not going to happen... yet.

So, I own a Quicksilver G4. I installed a Sonnet Tempo ATA/133 card, which is firmware upgradeable to support ATA-6 drives (drives bigger than 120GB). I purchased a Western Digital 180GB/8MB buffer/ 7200 RPM drive for $199.00 (from Compusa, with rebate) and an IBM 180GXP 180GB drive with the same specs from hypermicro.com for $289. These two drives now cohabitate in my Mac. The Sonnet card supports 2 drives at maximum bandwidth (133) or 4 at ATA/66. I'm sticking with two drives fow now. My system drive 80GB/barracuda ATA-IV has its own bus.

Buying a Sonnet Card that RAIDs these devices is an option, but not one I really need.

This gives me 360GB internally.

I have also purchased a Granite Digital Firewire hot-swappable SMART Tower (two-port) for $499. I will buy two 200 GB WD drives for this configuration, and will use it primarily for backups and secondarily as extra Scratch space, which it is rated to handle. Once I receive and configure it, I'll report back.

I recommend using storagereview.com and Apple's discussion boards in the "Expansion" section under PowerMac G4, as well as the LA final cut pro users group.

[looker]

FireWire Depot (http://www.fwdepot.com) offers a number of multi-bay enclosures and bridgeboards you can use with old scsi enclosure to create multi-bay firewire enclosures.

Build your own, save money!!!