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(Caldigit Raid Card) Using the new card, inputs here

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phildog33

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 1, 2006
109
0
I may be one of the first people using this card, so I wanted to let you guys know... its actually very good and does everything we wanted it to.

Good job to CalDigit. They are swamped right now and really indundated with calls and complaints from us, so I understand how they may come off this month. Everything will smooth itself out over the next few weeks as people get their cards and enjoy the speed and nice GUI to set up their arrays.

(INSTALL)

The install is not too bad, you take the magnet cover off the cpu cage, unscrew the fan assembly and disconnect the iPass cable from the MB.

The ipass cable connects to J18 on the raid card and then you slide the card into PCI slot #3 and put everything back in place. Not too bad.

(GUI-setup)

You select which of your internal drives you want to include in the array (found in preferences), Raid type and etc. I chose all 4 internals as Raid 5 and my 5th internal HD under the Optical Drive slot is my main OSX drive with apps and etc. Ive separated it from the Raid Array and its working great

Initializing on my 4TB (~2.7TB usable) array took about 8 hours.

Then use Disk Utility to intialize the array as a standard Mac OSX drive and it pops up on the desktop as an attached drive .. 2.7TB

(SPEED)

Im getting about 250-260mb speed as they quoted. Im very happy with the card. Its working excellent and their interface is a pleasure to use.

------------------

They did it. Its working great and they came through, very happy with CalDigit again.

Some of you guys are emailing me on the side, to talk about how you are disappointed with them. I was too a few weeks ago, but they did come through and its been worth the wait. They will get their shipments back to order soon and help everyone out. We'll all try to bear with them as they get through their system and calm everything down.
phildog33 is online now Report Post Edit/Delete Message
 
Did you attempt to setup any software RAID to have a direct comparison between a the software implementation performance and the hardware performance? I'm looking forward to getting this card, but I wonder if it has any real benefits over software for a RAID 0.
 
CalDigit RAID card is compatible with any the external eSATA Serial ATA Enclosure (like FirmTek, miniG) or it works only with HDElement?
 
Did anybody try to use a mini-sas to esata cable to connect 4 independent HD?
Sencond,I still wonder can I install a windows on external HD.
 
i bought a mini-sas to esata cable (breakout x4), nd it doesnt work with any ex drives either.

I also tried formatting in the raid itself... and then moving this to outside the box with the cables and enclosures.. Nothing works.

Yes you can replace all the HDs in the HD element with bigger capacity ones
 
How can it only work with HD element?

Supported only or won't work otherwise???

Someone else please respond. Interested in card, but not with being tied in to a proprietary esata enclosure.
 
Ive tried it guysm it wont work with any other enclosure. There is some sort of hardware check going on... and you have to use the HD element hardware enclosure

P
 
Wow, well thanks so much for reporting that. I'm on to something else I think
 
That is a shame. I think they said the pricing for the HD Element would be $0.99/GB, which would make the 4TB box a whopping $3,960.

4x1TB Samsung F1 drives from Newegg = $720.

Pretty though it is, $3,240 is a hell of a price for a drive enclosure! For that money, you could almost buy another 8 core Mac Pro and a RAID card.

I'd pay $1,500 for a 4TB HDElement, but nearly $4k? No way.
 
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