Highpoint Rocketraid 2642

[oz1]

Has anyone tried one of these in a MAC Pro 2008. Any drawbacks?

I'm interested in what speed improvement I'd get using one of these with 2 x 1TB SATA WD Blacks in a RAID 0 setup compared with a software RAID 0 setup with 2 x 1 SATA TB drives, 3 x 1TB drives or 4 x 1 TB drives.

I'd use the 2642 in three possible configs:

1. The 2 x 1 TB drives in a Procaddy 2 internal housing
2. The 2 internal drives plus 2 external 1 TB drives connected to the 2642 via e-SATA using 2 single drive Mastercooler cases to make up a 4 drive RAID 0 array.

Thanks

 

[MacUserPeggy]

Hello,

I haven't the system of Mac Pro 2008, so I just used HighPoint RocketRAID 2642 in Windows XP on RAID 0 having the performance compared below.

4 x 1TB > 3 x 1TB > 2 x 1TB.

But if you use the RAID 0, actually one potential issues is no fault tolerance - if one drive failure the entire array is down.

 

[Dr.Pants]

If I am correct, the Highpoint 2xxx series are soft RAID cards - that is, they drop the parity calculations to the CPU. In my G5, this was slightly concerning (need to keep it bleeding-edge!), so I decided on a different card. However, for RAID-0 on the card compared to straight software, there would be little improvement IMO, since the CPU does the work... lol, where's Nanofrog when you need him!

As for improvement, for RAID-0, each drive you tack on will effectively increase the transfer rate by that amount or a little less (as far as I know). 2x drives=2x write speed (practically). You may also want to consider larger drives. Larger drive capacities=higher data density=higher data transfer rates If that is what you are after with the RAID-0s, that is.

 

[MacUserPeggy]

If I am correct, the Highpoint 2xxx series are soft RAID cards - that is, they drop the parity calculations to the CPU. In my G5, this was slightly concerning (need to keep it bleeding-edge!), so I decided on a different card. However, for RAID-0 on the card compared to straight software, there would be little improvement IMO, since the CPU does the work... lol, where's Nanofrog when you need him!

As for improvement, for RAID-0, each drive you tack on will effectively increase the transfer rate by that amount or a little less (as far as I know). 2x drives=2x write speed (practically). You may also want to consider larger drives. Larger drive capacities=higher data density=higher data transfer rates If that is what you are after with the RAID-0s, that is.

If you undecided 2xxx series soft RAID cards, you can use really hardware cards. Why not to buy Highpoint RocketRAID 4311it is top-notch hardware raid cards with great performance.