Help With RAID Choice

[pantera327]

Hello All & Thanks In Advance.

I have a MAC PRO (2.8 8Core early 2008)

I just put 4 2TB hard drives in the sleds & moved the OS hard drive to the second optical bay.

I would really like to set these up in RAID 5 to give me the protection & size I am looking for. The whole setup will be used with files ranging from 200MB-2GB.

Has anyone used Highpoint 2680 or anything similar. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...115057&cm_re=Highpoint-_-16-115-057-_-Product

Any suggestions would be great.

Also I know that all the drives are connected in the MAC Pro what kind of cable would I need to connect to this RAID card or any other.

 

[WardC]

Keep in mind when you RAID your drives you will need to wipe everything to setup the RAID first, your drives are wiped when the RAID it setup.

 

[pantera327]

Yes I am aware. They are all brand new. Installed Yesterday. I don't plan on putting anything on them until I figure this out. I am running a full scan on each drive with Drive Genius 3 right now. I think it is possible to do RAID 1+0 with the drive utilities? If I have to I will do this, but I would much prefer to have about 6TB over about 4TB. Plus with that Highpoint card I think I could run a cable out of the case and it would allow for an additional 4 external drives in the future if needed.

 

[jav6454]

Use RAID 1+0. Better and less CPU expensive. However, with a dedicated RAID card, not like it matters. However, it is much more fault tolerant than RAID 5.

 

[NoManIsland]

I just put 4 2TB hard drives in the sleds & moved the OS hard drive to the second optical bay.

I would really like to set these up in RAID 5 to give me the protection & size I am looking for. The whole setup will be used with files ranging from 200MB-2GB.

Has anyone used Highpoint 2680 or anything similar. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...115057&cm_re=Highpoint-_-16-115-057-_-Product

I have heard a lot of negative things about Highpoint in general - Nanofrog would be the best guy to talk to about RAID card options.

I think it is possible to do RAID 1+0 with the drive utilities?

Yes, Disk Utility can set up a software RAID 10 with little overhead - this is the solution I'm setting up on my MP (same model).

On a separate note, I know that some of the MPs (can't remember which), use a miniSAS connector when attaching the internal bays, so (if the 2008 MP is one of these) you can unplug it and plug it into a RAID card for your RAID 5 - very elegantly allowing you to use the backplanes in more advanced RAID.

 

[philipma1957]

there are a lot of threads on this site that explain why raid5 can be a complete failure and loss of info. nanofrog can explain along with some others. I am pretty sure that to do raid5 correctly or safely you need 5 drives not 4. you also need a hi end raid card along with ups protection from blackouts. If all the above is not done your raid5 can be destroyed. So a low cost raid5 is not so easy to do.

Don't rush to setup and a few more knowledgeable members will explain this better then myself. i will say this after listening to the explanations I now do 5 clones one for each workday and A Time machine. I do not do raid5 at all.