Hello everyone, I have been searching for a good raid controller with ports for both internal & external drives. Does this exist on the mac side?
Hello everyone, I have been searching for a good raid controller with ports for both internal & external drives. Does this exist on the mac side?
I use it with this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...6&cm_re=rosewill_8_bay-_-16-132-016-_-Product
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Keep in mind, the card used with that particular enclosure uses software based RAID. So do not use it for a level 5 array, as it cannot deal with the write hole issue associated with parity based arrays (requires a hardware solution). Nor is it bootable for OS X.awesome, That looks like it would fit my needs!
I had been debating about buying rosewill for awhile. How is the build?
K
So it comes down to: What exactly do you need?
- Bootable under OS X?
- How many disks?
- How much throughput?
- Will you be running it with multiple OS's?
Speed is primarily a function of the number of disks used in the array (regardless of the level used). Past that, the card is also important, but you can't make the same disk count go faster than they're capable of running in the chosen configuration. So the more disks you use, the faster the throughput.I don't need it to be bootable.
a few of my regular clients are going HD, which means i'm going HD. I need speed. I think I could get away with only 4 or 5 disks. and yes I do use multiple OS's.
The ARC-1880i doesn't have sufficient ports to utilize the TR8X fully (8x ports total, 4x internal and 4x internal will leave 4x bays unusable without additional ports).Thanks nanofrog. I had been looking at other solutions but what you showed me is alot cheaper. The raid card looks like it will suit me for awhile. and i'm definitely going with an 8-bay enclosure.![]()
The ARC-1880i doesn't have sufficient ports to utilize the TR8X fully (8x ports total, 4x internal and 4x internal will leave 4x bays unusable without additional ports).
You can solve this by getting the ARC-1880ix12 (12 port version, and the cache is on a DIMM slot, which can be upgraded to a larger capacity; nice feature, and not available on ATTO's products).
If you wish to stick with the ARC-1880i, go with the TR4X (4 bay unit; just a smaller version of the TR8X).
Please note that the Sans Digital enclosures must have a 1:1 port to disk ratio, as there's no SAS expander in it. SAS expanders can allow you to run up to 128 disks, but they're sharing ports (just like a PM chip does with SATA disks; BTW, SAS expanders will work with SATA disks just like the card). But the also increase costs and complexity for a small system.
That's not an SFF-8088 on the ARC-1880i, but an Ethernet port (for email notification, remote access, and NTP use). SAS/SATA connections = 2x SFF-8087 only.OK - I'm confused. The 1880i is listed as an 8 port card. It has a single external SAS SFF-8088 connector. Even the 24 port card only has a single external SAS connector. THe SansDigital case only has a pair of SAS connectors. Looking at the spec sheet for the Areca cards, it is not at all clear how the port limitations are implemented. It would appear that an internal SFF-8087 connector is provided for every 4 internal ports the card supports, but except for the 1880x (which appears to be external only with 2 SF-8088 connectors), every card has a single external SAS connector.
I'm obviously having a senior moment![]()
I've not seen it, but a SAS expander is the only thing that makes any sense off the top of my head.Now what I'm confused about is how Lloyd ran a 6 disk array with the 6 port ATTO card on a single SAS connection? I'm pretty sure that is what he said he was doing on a post on his blog a couple weeks ago. I need to go look.
Unless the case was an expander (it was some $1400 sexy thing, in typical Lloyd fashion).