-
build a raid with 4 180gig Hitachi drives
Greetings,
I have 4 180 gigabyte hitachi drives that I would like to assemble into an external raid. I’m using them with FCP 4.5 on a FW800 G4 with BM Decklink. I have previously used all four drives in an internal raid, but would like to find an external solution to reduce some of the heat issues I’ve had. Any recommendations would be appreciated.
Harvey
-
5 Replies
-
You could find a 4 port PCI SATA card (for space, or you’ll need 2 ATA PCI cards). I think Highpoint sells an ATA to SATA plug to plug into the disks)
Then you could build the disks into an off the shelf PC cabinet. (You’ll need to fiddle some with the powersupply to make it work as the PSU is dependant on some short-circuiting happening on the mainboard – which you won’t have)
Then you’ll have to run the SATA cables out of your Mac and into your new RAID.
Happy fidling!
Gunleik
-
There are 4 port ATA cards. I have one in my old G4, System profiler says it’s an Acard 6280M.
If I recall, these 4 port cards are made by Sonnet, Acard, Siig, & maybe a few others. If you look hard enough, you may even be able to find one that supports some hardware RAID features. Just make sure that the card is specifically for Mac, the Windows ones will not work!
Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com -
I’m sure there are FW800 solutions out there, but if you’ve got an available PCI slot you should consider SATA.
Here’s what you’ll need:
https://www.macgurus.com/productpages/sata/satakits.php
-
Actually, my ATA card has 2 ports, not 4. But each port (or channel) supports 2 drives, so the card supports 4 drives.
Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com -
thanks for all the information. It’s been very helpful. I just went to Fry’s to see if I could get lucky with what they had in stock. They didn’t have everything I would need to build an external raid with my drives. While I was there I was astounded at how cheap SATA drives were. Obviously it’s been a while since I’ve bought HDs.
Thanks again,
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up