PCI Express Storage solutions

[Gary Taylor]

Hi Eric,
I would be interested in seeing how the array performs at say 70% and 90% full. That card does sound interesting for a PC solution I think Mody is a Mac user. Since the Mac card only has two internal bays Mac users prefer external solutions for HD. I work with both Macs and PCs and even on my PCs I am looking at external storage solutions because of better heat dissipation and portability they provide. I think the card alot of Mac users might get excited about would be a PCI-e version of the 2240 with Mac drivers.

The problem you are having with your array is related to a maximum volume size of 2TB. There are some drivers that allow you to get around this I think so you might want to check with High Point. Thanks for the report!
Gary

[Eric Pratt]

I’ll look into that, because I’m having a problem with an 1820a as well that is probably related, whereas if I hook that 8 drives up directly to the motherboard it has no problem with a 3.2Tb partition.
I am using an external array though, I mentioned a few posts up that I’m using a BlueRAID 832 external sata storage which connects 8 internal sata ports to an external enclosure.
Also, my understanding is that the RocketRAIDs work in both Mac and PC systems, they have a menu heading just for Mac but little real information. I did try to put the 1820a in my G4, but couldn’t get it to work and support wasn’t helpful.
I repartitioned the drives into two RAID 5 arrays and got an extra 400Gb out of it but it’s going to take 24 hours to initialize and then who knows how long to fill up to 90% capacity, but I’ll post back here when I get it close.

Eric Pratt
Virtualsetworks

[Gary Taylor]

Hi Eric,
How are you getting those cables out of your system? Does it go through an unused PCI-X card opening?
Thanks,
Gary

[Eric Pratt]

The unit comes with a custom internal to backplane cable, and then there is a cable that plugs into the backplane from the enclosure which hooks into the drives. It does take up a free slot.