I’ve bough the card and talked to the support people and still I’m getting a little lost.
Here’s the computer:
Mac Pro 2.26
Here’s the controller card:
Newer TEchnology esata 6g PCIe 2.0 Raid Capable Controller Card
[ul]
[li]PCIe 2.0 x1 (500MB/s bandwidth)[/li] • Compatible with PCIe 1.0 (250MB/s bandwidth)
[li] Two eSATA 6Gb/s ports (600MB/s*)[/li][li] eSATA Hot Plug Support[/li][li] Port Multiplier support for up to 10 drives[/li][li] RAID level 0, 1, 5, 10, JBOD (SPAN and individual drive modes) support[/li][li] Convenient browser-based management[/li][li]SHI (Storage Health Inspector) for the monitoring and reporting of drive health[/li][li] Compatible with SATA based hard disk drives and solid state drives[/li][li] 3 year warranty[/li][/ul]
The drive plan:
SSD Boot
large internals for Time Machine and non-important stuff
The Working Drive Area will be external RAID array via the card.
I have two eSata ports, so I can have up to 2 enclosures. Each enclosure can have up to 5 drives.
The immediate plan that I believe can be affordable is to have one drive with either 4 or 5 bays holding 500gb drives. If that becomes too pricey, take it down to 320. This will give me either 1.2 or 2 tb of fast working space.
The plan is RAID 5 for both speed and protection.
NOW…
I’m getting completely flummoxed about enclosures. I talked to the support guy and I asked him 5 differnt ways what I needed to make sure I had and what I didn’t need to worry about and what I wanted to avoid. Even after 30 minutes I did not come away clear enough to feel comfortable making a purchase.
I have never used RAID before, but I have bought bare drives and put them in a powered enclosure, installed a PCI drive controller card with an eSata interface and connected them successfully. I know a fan is important.
But what I am not sure about is the capabilities of the enclosure itself. Does it have to have its own mini controller that is specifically designed for RAID? Can any powered enclosure with the right interface be used instead?
Understand that I am trying to be as cheap as I can possibly be with this. I’m sure if I had a lot of money to spend it would be no big, but since I’m scrounging for the lowest prices, I have to be more careful about what’s missing or outdated. For instance, early on I noted that a 15-bay enclosure could be had for almost nothing on Ebay. It was so cheap I was suspicious and I did the research, learning, to my disgust, that these huge business-level storage racks are created to only use specific drives, and once those drives become archaic (in this case they were 75 gigs or something) the enclosure becomes garbage. Very obnoxious and wasteful. As well as disappointing.
So I know I need to have an eSATA interface. I know that 6gb is not important because while the card can handle it, the computer can’t. The tech guy said that I have to be sure it supports port multiplication…but hen he said if it is a multi-bay enclosure with eSATA its a safe bet that it does.
Here are some enclosures that caught my eye:
Rosewill RSV-S4-X 4 Bay SATA to eSATA (Port Multiplier) JBOD / RAID 0, 1, 1+0, 5 Enclosure
Steelvine eSATA PORT MULITIPLIER 5 BAY CASE
ProBox 4 Bay Hard Drive Enclosure for 3.5-inch hard disk drive - USB 2.0 & eSATA
Most of these say that they are somehow supporting RAID, but I’ve seen others that don’t mention it…
So can ya help me out here?
Thanks!