Mac Pro Raid Card?

Not sure about others but the reason the Apple one is so expensive is because it is for SAS drives.
 
A quick google check shows me that there are a lot of raid cards that are compatible, cant to link them i'm afraid though due to competitors

something like "HighPoint RocketRAID 2320 PCI Express SATA II RAID Host Controller" might be what your looking for though
 
You're not a man until you go 'Pro.

Also, my additional 8GB of RAM just shipped :D *evil laugh*
 
I believe the Apple RAID card also allows you to boot from it, which none of the other 3rd party RAID cards can do.
Depends on whether this is important to you or not. However it does mean you could have a 4 drive RAID 5 array with OSX installed on it.
 
Ender said:
A quick google check shows me that there are a lot of raid cards that are compatible, cant to link them i'm afraid though due to competitors

something like "HighPoint RocketRAID 2320 PCI Express SATA II RAID Host Controller" might be what your looking for though
Click to expand...

As epswat states above, what does he/you mean?

If I bought this Highpoint card I wont be able to utilize raid with mac os on them?

  • Not compatible with internal SATA bays in Mac Pro
  • Data Mode Only - controller and RAID array not bootable into Mac OS X

:confused:
 
Hi,

The Apple RAID card is the only RAID controller that allows OSX to boot from a RAID5 volume.

Yes, you can boot from a software RAID, but that only allows RAID1 mirroring.
With the Mac Pro & the Apple RAID card, you can fill all 4 bays with 500GB SATA disks and RAID5 it to give yourself 1.5TB of usable storage including booting the OS from it.

If you go any other route, you could use 1 disk for the OS, leaving 3 for a RAID5 volume. Using 3 rather than 4 disks loses a lot of usable disk space. 3 X 500GB in RAID5 only gives you 1TB of storage (as you always lose the space of 1 disk for parity).

I think you can even go up to 750GB disks, but am not 100% sure.

Simply put, if you only want RAID1, then go with software RAID. If you want RAID5 internal to the Mac Pro (as opposed to going for an external RAID enclosure) then the Apple RAID card is worth the money, as you can use all 4 drives in the Mac Pro to both boot the OS and store your stuff on.

Hope this helps!

Elliott
 
thanks for the quick reply epswat; just two questions matey.

as a guy said above, the raid card is exclusive for SAS drives?

also, since raid 5 gives you the performance of raid 0 and the safety of raid 1 - will this work.

standard MP comes with 320gb hdd, so i leave this with osx installed etc. i then maybe buy 3x1TB :p and use Apple's Raid Utility to use those 3x1TB in Raid 5?

Thus giving me the ability to have performance/safety for my movies/music?

Or would it not be worth the hassle and stick to 2x1TB in raid 0

:confused:
 
I would stick with the 2 X 1TB in mirror TBH. I do not think you can do soft RAID 5 in any case. Bear in mind RAID1 also gives you a nice speed boost when reading, as you can sequentially read from both disks at the same time.

RAID1 loses out on writes and disk usage, as you lose one complete disk effectively.

It's a minefield ain't it!


Elliott
 
Just to clear things up..

RAID 5 is not possible via software in OS X. RAID 0 and RAID 1 are, though :cool:

Get 2x 1TB in RAID 1 if you're worried, or put them in RAID 0 if you're feeling dangerous.
 
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