RAID 0 now RAID 5 later?

[David Roth weiss]

There are enclosures with built-in cards that enable Raid-5 capability and controller cards that it as well. So yes, you can add raid-5 to your current setup after the fact by getting an appropriate controller card.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

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A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Scott Davis]

Thanks David, That is a relief to know that it is not an “all or nothing” upgrade deal.

[Arnie Schlissel]

Most of the SATA and all of the SAS cards that support RAID 5 use Infiniband (SAS) connectors. If your enclosure has these connectors, you’re golden. If it has eSATA connectors, well, who knows what the future will bring?

Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog

[Tom Brooks]

You should find something available. HIghpoint has many flexible arrangements of jacks, cables and RAID support (2314MS for example). Maybe the ATTO R380 can be adapted too (nice card, but $$).

[Arnie Schlissel]

I wouldn’t recommend the HighPoint cards. I’ve been using one for the last year & find it to be a bit quirky. If you don’t cycle the power on the RAID when you reboot the Mac, it may not mount, or it may mount with a drive missing. Once we remount the missing drive, it automatically rebuilds, so we’ve never lost data, but we do lose a little time.

If the Atto had been available when I built this RAID, I would have paid the extra for it at the time. Now you can also look at Areca, Cal Digit, and maybe 3Ware.

Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog

[Tom Brooks]

Arnie,
That’s a bummer, because Highpoint has a great feature set at a low price point. We’re looking for the best price/performance combo here. The ultimate in speed is less important than stability for my shop. Thanks.
-Tom

[Tom Brooks]

I meant to ask which HighPoint card you have. Thanks.
Tom

[Arnie Schlissel]

Why, yes, it is a bummer. I think we have the 2322 card, BTW. It has 2 external mini-SAS connectors.

If I were building an array now for a PCIe Mac, I’d go with a card from either Atto or Areca. Maybe Cal Digit.

Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog

[Tracey Dunn]

Arnie,
That’s interesting, I have a sonnet card connected to a five bay from Kano and it does the same thing. When I start up the mac the icon to the raid is sometimes missing off the desktop.
The drive manager tells me the drives are not corrupted, but I have to re-install the software update for the card. Then the icon quietly reappears, like a missing child who thinks nothing is wrong. Then I discovered that if I start the tower first then get it up to operating speed, then start the mac it’s there from the beginning. The Kano people said the start up order shouldn’t make a difference, which strangely, at first, it didn’t, but now it does.
The first time this happened I though I’d lost everything, but now it’s just another quirk on the learning curve.

I’m up for purchasing another tower, so I’m curious to see if any other cards do the same thing. Also, I use a port multiplier, and when I spoke to the guys at Dulce, they said Port multipliers are not the way to go and in fact are on the way out. I took a look at CalDigit and their stuff uses port multipliers.
Any thoughts,
T.

[Arnie Schlissel]

An interesting little thing about port-multiplier cabling- the actual bandwidth of the cable is only 300 MB/second, the SAS cabling is 1200 MB/sec. So, even though you can put 5 drives on a port multiplier cable, vs 4 for a SAS cable, the entire bandwidth of the cable is much lower. In practice, it doesn’t really matter that much because 7200 RPM SATA drives don’t really put out 300 MB/sec. Their sustained speeds are much lower, and if you stripe 5 of them together into a RAID 0, you’re only really writing to one drive at a time.

Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog