[Trygve]

Thinking of buying a MacPro w/4 1TB drives, at least 2 of which will be mirrored, but might do a 2TB split with the third drive for parity. What are the Pros/Cons of buying the Apple RAID card vs just doing the RAID with Disk Utility setup? It is certainly not a cheap card.

[ide3308]

i believe the RAID card provides a battery backup among other features

[mduell]

If you want parity (RAID5), then you have to have the Apple RAID card; Disk Utility doesn't support it.
If you're just doing mirroring/striping, then the RAID card improves performance.

[tooki]

The RAID card also adds the ability to use server-grade SAS drives. They're very expensive, but hella fast.

antonio

[chipchen]

ooh... SAS... fast... but very expensive... the RAID card too, is expensive.