I like the aluminum Sans Digital, apple has burned in my brain that I must have great looking hardware. It's gotta match
. Wish I didn't feel that way cause the $219 is a great deal.
You're not the only one, which is why I linked the silver versions of the Sans Digital enclosures.
They also work well, have good prices (really good price/performance ratio), and offer additional value in the fact the external cables necessary are included (not that big a deal with the eSATA versions, but it is with the SAS variants, as those cables are ~$60USD each <1.0 meter>).
I'm going with the aluminum sans digital since it can fit 2TB drives for a total of 16TB. OWC sells it without the card (link in my other post) but it's the same price as the one with card. Just to be sure, the one from OWC is the proper enclosure that can hold 16TB, right? I'll also buy the card from OWC that supports PM.
Yes.
Both the TR8M and TR8MP are the same enclosure, and will support 2TB disks (the TR8MP is just the kit; same enclosure and it includes a Highpoint RocketRAID 722).
So either one will work. You could sell off the RR722, or use it for Windows/Linux (same or different machine). Up to you, as both newegg and OWC are good companies to deal with.
Is overall speed slower with a software RAID?
Yes, and it's due to several factors.
The actual variance will depend on the specifics however, so don't panic (mainly the number of drives used). For example, the throughputs of say a 2x disk stripe set will be similar between the ICH, eSATA card, and proper RAID card, given there's one port per disk. But as you scale up te member count, things change (and fast for PM based enclosures, as you're sharing one port with multiple drives).
True RAID cards can be used with one port per disk, and can have a substantial number of ports (up to 24). So there's additional bandwidth for parallel disks which results in much higher throughputs. The processor and cache on the card can also speed things up as well, but the additional bandwidth is the real key as to why they can blow the doors off of the ICH and a SATA/eSATA implementation. But you pay for it (and it can be quite handsomely in fact, as it doesn't take much effort to hit $3k USD for a fairly modest
DAS).
Now assuming you've one port per disk, the independent processor and cache can further push throughputs for an array vs. the ICH or eSATA + PM implementation you're planning (again, keeping this to one port per disk; once you're running multiple disks on one port, the comparison isn't really valid, as it's an Apples to Oranges situation).
But unless you're doing 3D graphics work, scientific simulations,... (stuff that requires some serious throughputs), you don't need a proper RAID system. So I suspect the eSATA + PM method will do you just fine (more than fine if you've a large movie and/or music library you're trying to store).
If so, doesnt the card I'm buying from OWC provide a hardware RAID?
No. It's nothing more than a SATA controller chip and software, which is why it's so cheap.
If you were looking at a true RAID card, starting prices (4 port models), usually start ~$300USD (bit less on occasion, but not much). And they can go over $1k USD (24 port units).
