[schalliol]

Apple now offers a RAID Card for the Mac Pros and xserves that utilizes the existing drives. I was wondering if anyone had thoughts on it, how it works, what it really does, etc. With only 4 internal drives available, I wondered if perhaps using this card you could boot on RAID 5. It sounds pretty steep at $1k.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by schalliol 

Apple now offers a RAID Card for the Mac Pros and xserves that utilizes the existing drives. I was wondering if anyone had thoughts on it, how it works, what it really does, etc. With only 4 internal drives available, I wondered if perhaps using this card you could boot on RAID 5. It sounds pretty steep at $1k.

It works with the SATA ports already in the drive bays to provide hardware RAID acceleration (notably the parity calculation for RAID5). $1000 is about right for a real hardware RAID card, not the 'do everything in the driver' cards that Promise/Highpoint/etc sell and Intel/nVidia/etc integrate into their chipsets. Yes, you should be able to boot off any array managed by the card.

[ninahagen]

Presuming one uses a wire harness to expand the Mac Pro to 6 HDs, would there be any conflict in using this RAID card with a 4 disc array in addition to seperate system and scratch drives?

[OreoCookie]

mduell is right on, you should be able to boot off it and the price is right. There are some cheaper SATA RAID5-capable cards, but these are rather slow. Judging from the specs, Apple's RAID card's price is justified.

@ninahagen
There shouldn't be any interference between the two.

[trancepriest]

I'm wondering when will Apple list it for sale in the store without attaching it as a optional Mac Pro purchase. I would love to purchase one for my Mac Pro immediately. I already have a 4 x 750GB configuration. One HD for system files and the other 3 for a RAID 0 scratch drive. Would love to have all 4 RAIDed. I'm a video editor so I need the redundancy.

[ninahagen]

Originally Posted by trancepriest 

I'm wondering when will Apple list it for sale in the store without attaching it as a optional Mac Pro purchase. I would love to purchase one for my Mac Pro immediately. I already have a 4 x 750GB configuration. One HD for system files and the other 3 for a RAID 0 scratch drive. Would love to have all 4 RAIDed. I'm a video editor so I need the redundancy.

Gosh, you must be smoking fast in Photoshop and video edits with 3 x 750 RAID. Have you considered the harness I spoke of above? You could add 2 drives... one for system/software, one for storage, using your current 4 in RAID as a scratch volume. Have you taken the speed test? We could really use your results! Despite many posts, we have none with such a screaming machine. (please )

http://forums.macnn.com/65/mac-pro-a...configuration/

[mduell]

Originally Posted by ninahagen 

Presuming one uses a wire harness to expand the Mac Pro to 6 HDs, would there be any conflict in using this RAID card with a 4 disc array in addition to seperate system and scratch drives?

Should be fine... you may even be able to include the extra drives in your array (all ports on the logic board may be treated te same)

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

There are some cheaper SATA RAID5-capable cards, but these are rather slow.

Are they actual hardware RAID (which in the case of RAID5 includes parity calculation), or do they do all the heavy lifting in the driver? Do they work with the built-in SATA ports?

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by mduell 

Are they actual hardware RAID (which in the case of RAID5 includes parity calculation), or do they do all the heavy lifting in the driver? Do they work with the built-in SATA ports?

I'm referring to real hardware RAIDs.