[bighead]

I'm looking to cram a load of SATA drives into my old G4 tower, and need a 4-port all-internal SATA PCI card, and it looks like only two fit the bill for my particular Mac (2003 MDD DP 1.25 GHz)

One is the Firmtek/Seritek 1V4 model shown here on OWC: FirmTek SeriTek/1V4 PCI-X to SATA Controller at OWC

and the other is the Highpoint 1740 shown here on their site: HighPoint Technologies, Inc RR1740

Both have relatively few public reviews posted about them in Macs, and the ones for the Highpoint are varied in their results. It looks like the Firmtek card doesn't require additional drivers, which is handy, but doesn't have built-in RAID functionality.

I'm currently using Apple's software RAID on 10.5 with the built-in ATA interfaces on the G4 tower and it has been pretty reliable. I've only had it fall out of sync once, and it rebuilt like a champ with no loss whatsoever. I'm not after speed, I'm just looking for the easiest, smoothest RAID setup possible with the least amount of headaches. Any experiences or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

And, as a secondary question, I found fantastic 2x3.5" to 1x5.25" drive adapters here: Noise Blocker Hard disk decoupler NB-X-Swing Products Model: 34004 If anyone has suggestions on less-expensive brackets for the purpose of putting HDs in the optical drive bay (I want 4 HDs in the 2x optical drive bays of this machine) it would also be appreciated.

[bighead]

And as a follow-up, I've also found several PCI SATA cards based on the Silicon Image 3124 chipset around the intarwebs that are MUCH more affordable than the previously discussed cards, though the FirmTek looks like it may be based on that chipset. Anyone with experience with these SATA cards?

Example:
Newegg.com - Rosewill RC-217 SATA II 4 Port RAID 0/1/0+1/5/JBOD PCI RAID Card - Controllers / RAID Cards

[reader50]

I tried the Rosewill RC-213 (Silicon Image PCIe RAID card) and could not get it to work in my G5. Connected drives could be seen via the RAID utility, but were never passed through to the operating system. It was a useful experiment - the card was on sale for $20, with free shiping and a $10 rebate. So the experience cost me very little.

Some people have reported success with the non-RAID versions of generic SI cards. Note that the SI drivers only work up to 10.5.1 anyway, and SI can't seem to be bothered to update them for later Leopard versions.

Firmtek (and Sonnet?) apparently write their own firmware for the cards they sell, resulting in much higher compatibility. The extra man-hours also explain the higher price tags. In the end, I paid more to get a midrange RocketRaid with their active driver development.

[bighead]

Originally Posted by reader50 

In the end, I paid more to get a midrange RocketRaid with their active driver development.

And I assume you're happy with the Highpoint? And, being a PCI Express G5, this was on a dual-core G5 tower?

[reader50]

Yes, a dual-core G5. I left that part out because you're looking for a PCI card. So my specific hardware was inapplicable, but the driver info ought to be relevant to any PPC Mac.

Note that my needs are different from yours - I wanted at least 4 ports, at least 2 of them eSATA with port multiplier, optional internal SATA ports, and a PCIe x4 card for RAID speed and/or future SSD drives. In the future, single SSD drives will be able to saturate individual SATA ports, so a PCIe x1 card would be badly bottlenecked by it's 250 MB/s interface to the motherboard.

My card has 4 eSATA and no SATA, so I ended up using one of those SATA -> eSATA brackets in reverse. Connected the internal drive to the bracket cable, then used a short eSATA cable as a jumper on the outside, from card eSATA port to bracket eSATA port. It works.

[reader50]

Oh, and the thread belongs in Peripherals -> renamed Consumer Hardware & Components

Since there is no hacking or modification involved, I've moved the thread.

[bighead]

I think I'll be going the route of a Highpoint card. And, since I'm here, has anyone seen reports of the Highpoint 2220 working properly in a G4 tower? According to their website, it looks like compatibility should be there, but I'm not 100% sure. I may try emailing them, but it sounds like their support is less than 100%...

[reader50]

HighPoint lists the RR 2220 as G4 compatible. Barefeats has benchmarked it, though they did it in a G5 with PCI-X slots, rather than your PCI slots.

I once emailed them through the hptmac website, asking about 2314 G5 compatibility - it was only shown on their Intel page. They never replied. I eventually figured it out - by downloading their 2314 speed benchmarks PDF. The PDF listed near the beginning that the tests has been done on a G5.

edit: G5 owners should avoid the highpoint 230x and 231x cards. They contain a firmware bug that causes the G5 to peg one CPU at 100% all the time. Highpoint refuses to fix the issue, and their support people won't even tell us what the issue is, or why it is deemed unfixable.

[bighead]

Yeah, I found one guy on the Apple Discussion boards that had run the 2220 in a G4 tower successfully, which gave me hope as long as the power supply held out. Since it's designed to run 2x DVD drives, 4 HDs, an ADC display, and I think it even came with SCSI drives that may have taken more power in heavy use.

Looking at the power consumption of the ADC port on the video card (28VDC at max 4A), I think the power supply can handle the load of 4 extra Caviar Black drives without a display drawing power through the video card. Running 8x Caviar Black drives should draw, at most 75-80W going by their specs page.

I guess we'll see how that works out.