Apricorn 4x SSD PCIe Raid for the Mac Pro

[bugout]

Did a search and didn't see anything about this. Saw it on Engadget.

http://www.apricorn.com/product_detail.php?type=family&id=71

I think they really shot for the bottom here using the Western digital SSD's.

What would be a good DIY version of this? Probably cost a lot less then 1500 bananas too.

 

[philipma1957]

it says you need a 32 bit kernel. seems out of date to me. Now if you have 4 new owc 240gb units and it boots into a 64 bit kernel at about 1k that would be nice. below was pulled from their site :


Data Transfer Rate: SATA II speeds up to 3Gb/s
Board Interface: PCIe 1.0
SSD interface: SATA II
Drives:
Model Number:

128GB MLC WD SiliconEdge Blue 2.5" SATA Solid State Drive
SSC-D0128SC-2100

Drive Features: Fast data transfer
Up to 250 MB/s read and up to 170 MB/s write transfer rates per drive allow your system to run faster so you can work more efficiently.
Advanced Wear-Leveling
WD's wear-leveling algorithm uses a combination of dynamic and static wear-leveling that writes data evenly over the entire drive, preventing drive wear out and lengthening drive life.

Advanced Error Correction
Enables error free data transmission by deploying advanced error correction technologies to detect and correct errors resulting from signal noise or other kinds of interference that causes data distortion.

Native Command Queuing (NCQ)
Increases the performance of SATA drives by placing read / write commands in the optimal sequential order for the fastest execution.

Data Integrity Protection
Prevents data loss from unexpected power loss during write operations to ensure data integrity and availability.

Average Read Speed: With 4x Solid State Drives: 760 MB/sec
Average Write Speed: With 4x Solid State Drives: 524 MB/sec
Dimensions: PCIe: 4.8” x 12.28”
Warranty: 1 year limited
System Requirements: Processor:
MacPro with an available PCI-Express slot.
Model years supported, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010
Operating System:
Mac OS 10.4.x (or later)
32-bit Kernel Mode required

Comments: One gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes; accessible capacity will be less and actual capacity depends on the operating environment and formatting.

 

[nanofrog]

http://www.apricorn.com/product_detail.php?type=family&id=71

I think they really shot for the bottom here using the Western digital SSD's.

Note the PCIe 1.0 spec, which means that each lane is only good for 250MB/s max, and @ 4x lanes, the max possible throughput (assumes no additional overhead), is 1.0GB/s.

So really fast drives would throttle (anything that can exceed 250MB/s), which is where most of the fast disks top out at (C300's apparently already exceed this).

What would be a good DIY version of this? Probably cost a lot less then 1500 bananas too.

You'd need to go with either a RAID card (Areca ARC-1880i is the cheapest 6.0Gb/s RAID), or non-RAID Host Bus Adapter (ATTO Technology is the only company I've seen with 6.0Gb/s cards of this type, and the H608 would be the one to look at; $400USD).

The H608 is cheaper, but must use Disk Utility to perform the RAID functions (which is fine).

The RAID card (ARC-1880i) performs the RAID functions on it's own (particularly useful for future system changes, such as moving to a redundant level not supported by Disk Utility, such as RAID 5 or 6), and the cache will improve performance. Worth the additional $143 IMO due to the additional capabilities (i.e. add a 4x disk level 5 array for your primary data).

Up to you.

Both cards are internal port models, 6.0Gb/s compliant, and use PCIe 2.0 lanes (500MB/s max throughput per lane). So both solutions are capable of faster throughputs using 4x fast SSD's, but especially if you add more disks to the array (up to 8x for either card).

If you go with a RAID solution, there's other models with increased port counts (up to 24 disks and retain a 1:1 ratio of ports to disks; they are SAS cards, and can be used with SAS expanders for more disks = 128 for the Areca, 256 for the ATTO).

So the real question is, how crazy are you and do you have the budget to support your habit?