I will install a used pair of 3,0 GHz Quad Xeons very shortly in my MacPro1,1 and have that effectively upgraded to an octo 2007 MacPro1,1. Now I'm thinking about my next project with the MacPro and I thought I have a go at putting in a pair of fast 64 GB SSDs and run them as a soft RAID0 boot drive under 10.5.7 and Snow Leopard when it comes out. I feel that I will get away with 128 GB for boot drive.
For Bootcamp Vista64 I will have a separate HD that will run either from the internal SATA #3 or from ODD-SATA #5 with AHCI drivers depending of my finding when I have installed the RAID0.
I was thinking of two Super Talent SSD MasterDrive SX 64GB 2.5" SATA II with 2,5" to 3,5" mechanical adaptors. They would cost me about 300 and would work on 220/200 MB/s read/write speeds. Spec follows:
http://www.supertalent.com/products/ssd_detail.php?type=MasterDrive SX#
also see white paper on Mac Pro uses
http://www.supertalent.com/datasheets/SuperTalent Ultradrive Apple Whitepaper.pdf
Before I get carried away with this I thought I should ask some questions because I have zero experience with RAID0 on a Mac. All my experience is with a RAID0 on an old Shuttle PC with build in RAID controller. Questions:
1) Would I be able to use what Leopard offeres as a software RAID without incurring severe bottlenecks elsewhere? I thought that I'll have plenty of CPU power with the octo but what do I know?
2) Would my boot drive be several times faster than an un-RAIDed 5400rpm HD?
3) If I was forced to use a hardware RAID controller
- what would be a good choice?
- can I still use the internal SATA II ports?
- if not would it be feasible to change the cabling?
- what cable sets to use?
This is a longer term project so I might wait some weeks months if new product is about to be launched on the market.