Thanks Nanofrog, I was looking to raid with a caldigit or rocketraid 4322 on the 2008 Mac Pro's but decided to wait for the 2009s. Waited, Just purchased and was looking for more info on them and stumbled onto your post about the unsuable 3rd party's in them! You just saved me al lot of frustration!
. I still don't know what I'm going to do, I don't really want to go external.....
On the '09 models, the only way to use 3rd party is external. No other way ATM. Perhaps one of the vendors would be successful at using the ports soldered directly, but I doubt it, as Apple wouldn't share the necessary information, and they could likely find themselves embroiled in an IP (Intellectual Property , i.e. Patent) legal suit.
The next best possiblility, would be go straight to iSCSI, AoE, NAS,... based solutions. Depending on specifics, speed can vary, but usually is decent, and still external. Can be an inexpensive way to go though.
No idea of you're needs though, and it may not be the best solution for you.
That leaves Apple's RAID card. Ewww...
I had read this but thought that Highpoint had fixed the problem but I guess I was wrong. This is however a concern I guess that brings me back to one reason having the OS on a separate disk might not be such a bad idea. It would suck if every update to Mac OS X of either a Highpoint or Areca card made the array unusable. That said, I was eying the Areca ARC-1680ix-8/12 but the $680 price tag wasn't enough to win me over the Rocketraid 4320 I did find for $350. But, now that it seems like having a secondary array is a still in the works I'm not opposed to returning my Rocketraid card (which arrives tomorrow) - especially if it is DOA in terms of being usable from this EFI problem.
Sad too, as Areca makes them for Highpoint.
It's likely due to the changes made to meet budget requirements.
Yeah, definitely see that now and again it just makes me think having the OS on the array maybe bad if ever OS update has a chance of toasting it / making it unusable. With a satisfactory backup solution and the OS on a regular drive not IN the array at least if the raid card becomes inoperable you could continue to be productive as your data still exists on the external backup (Nas, qnap, etc) as many of you have suggested.
Even with the OS on a separate drive, you'd still loose access to the array. Not much different, really, except it can be easier to undo the update. Saves time perhaps, but not much else. That said, you're time may be limited (has a financial value), particularly if you use the system to earn a living.
Yeah I'm also looking at a single Big Lacie type disc that could fill this role. And yes, I am MORE than aware of the cost of recovering a single 2.5 drive as I mentioned earlier! I can only guess what a 6 disc RAID array would cost!!!! I never want to have to find out.
RAID recovery is worse, as there's more to it. Figure ~$18k or even $20k (on the outside) for 6 drives!
That could be a modest new car.
Yeah, I'm not at all opposed to returning the card that I purchased and these recent posts make me think that maybe one of the Areca ARC-1680ix-8/12 cards would be better as I could get both internal and external ports and then have the ability to back that all up.
You could go with a couple of Areca's.
One would be say the
ARC-1680ix12. (SAS based, as I assume you know). Pickey with SATA drives, and you'd have to use either the Seagate ES.2 or WD RE2's enterprise drives. (RE3's aren't certified on it yet. I tried them earlier, and they didn't work. Perhaps the new firmware revision will change this. Areca's passed them for the SATA controllers, but is still testing on the SAS models. If you can be patient, it may be an option if you choose one of these). Overall, it's a really good card. If you choose to upgrade to SAS drives at a later time, you're covered. Extremely fast with them as well. (Fujitsu MBA3300RC). You can boot OS X from it if you wish, and upgrade the cache, giving a nice performance boost for esentially peanuts. DDR2-533 ECC is cheap. You should be able to easily locate a 2GB DIMM for $20 - 25USD. The downside, it the pickyness of SATA drives, and it isn't the fastest performer in thier line with SATA drives. But no slouch, by any means.
Their speed king with SATA, is the other card I wanted to bring to your attention. The
ARC-1231ML. It uses a slightly older IOP, but it actually outperforms the ARC-1680 Series with SATA drives.
It can also be upgraded in terms of the cache (same type used, so still quite inexpensive).
It's downside per se, is YOU CANNOT BOOT OS X. Windows and Linux boot just fine. But as you seem to be interested in running the OS on a separate drive, this won't matter.
Areca also seems to do quite well with keeping up with Apple's update changes. If it breaks the card, they'll have a fix out rather quickly. So far, it's not a matter of being "broken", but having to reboot in order to return array availablility. Not that big a deal, as you aren't totally dead, but it may scare you the first time.
Sorry to add to any confusion, but it seems like it could help you in the long run. Run the numbers on the Areca cards, cables, and enclosures. Then compare it to an iSCSI, AoE,... route.
Keep in mind, even Areca's 8 port internal cards will be higher than the Highpoint. But you get additional features. The Partition Table backup feature alone is worth it IMO. The upgradeable cache is certainly extremely nice as well (depending on model).
