Multiple sets of striped drives on one RAID controller?

[psychometry]

Does anyone know if it's possible to have two sets of striped drives using a single hardware RAID controller? I'm looking at the ARC-1210 and it seems like you can have more than one set of striped drives, but I'm not positive.

My plan is to have two small SSDs set up for the boot drive and two HDDs for storage, each pair set up with RAID 0. Can this be accomplished using a single controller?

Note: I'd just use OS X's software RAID but I need to keep the cores freed up for computation. I'm not concerned with redundancy--just speed.

 

[VideoFreek]

You can check out the manual for that controller on the manufacturer's website and get all the gory details about how it can be configured. Looks like a pretty capable controller. To your question, yes--you would set up two arrays and then add the appropriate disks to each array, specifying RAID 0 for each. That's it!

 

[nanofrog]

Does anyone know if it's possible to have two sets of striped drives using a single hardware RAID controller? I'm looking at the ARC-1210 and it seems like you can have more than one set of striped drives, but I'm not positive.

My plan is to have two small SSDs set up for the boot drive and two HDDs for storage, each pair set up with RAID 0. Can this be accomplished using a single controller?

Yes, this is possible.

Keep in mind, that that controller is fine for 2x SSD's (by themselves in a RAID 0). Not so sure what it will do for simultaneous access for both sets though (333MHz processor).

As you're concerned with performance, you'd be better off with the ARC-1212 (1200MHz SAS controller, but it runs SATA). It's also easier to get the drives up and running with this one as well in terms of cabling (can't use SATA cables in the HDD bays). In the case of a 2009/10 system, you will need adapters to make HDD bays work (MaxUpgrades sells them). In an '08 or earlier, you just use the breakout cable that comes in the box (physically locate them in the empty optical bay, or use an additional drive cage available from a 3rd party vendor).

Personally, I'd go for a Pro Caddy 2, and find a place to stuff the 2x SSD's, such as on top of the 3.5" disks in the Pro Caddy 2 device.

You need to realize that you'll need to run enterprise grade HDD's (check out the HDD Compatibility List on Areca's site), and a good UPS (Online type if at all possible).