[Thomas Miller]

[Luis Rodriguez] “Bob is right on the money in regard to Highpoint’s support department. It just doesn’t exist. On the other hand, if you absolutely need RAID 5 and are not in a position to ditch your Sonnet array for MiniSAS or Thunderbolt, you will have a hard time finding a reliable and well supported alternative in the market. You can also check with vendors such as Promax to see what they offer in terms of RAID 5 in eSATA. It may be worth your while to purchase the controller from a vendor that will back the product with support.”
Yes, I absolutely agree with that. The other option we might choose, that we just don’t use the Sonnet D500P arrays any more and buy an new enclosure with an integrated RAID5 controller.

[Luis Rodriguez] “The 2314 is not a true “hardware” RAID controller and will use your system resources. The card will see the various drives as a disk pool and allow you to manually group the drives into user defined RAID sets or individual volumes.”
Okay, do you know how the card gives the possibility to build a Software RAID5 on a Mac, which can’t to that at it’s own via the included software?

[Thomas Miller]

[Luis Rodriguez] “Thomas,
You can use up to four Port Multiplier arrays (or single eSATA drives) at the same time with the RR2314. The Highpoint RR2314 will allow you to create multiple RAID groups (R0, R5, etc.) as well as single drive JBOD volumes.”

Hey, thanks for your answer. Do you know this theoretically or have you seen/used this in practise? It would be awesome if this will work with our four D500P enclosures.
The thing I don’t get right at the moment ist how the 2314 handles four RAID5 Systems, one in each D500P, at the same time, especially when you copy something from one RAID5 to another. Is it right, that all stuff regarding RAID5 ist handled by the 2314 alone, means that it’s all hardwarebased, without support from the system/cpu? I’m just wondering because the card would be quite busy if it has to handle four RAID5 systems at the same time, might become extremely hot as well…

[Bob Zelin] “Thomas –
call this number –
1-408-942-5801

and ask them your question about the 2314. Please let us know the resonse you get from them. “

Hi Bob, thanks for your answer. It’s the support number from HIGHPOINT, right? At the moment I’m in Germany, where I’m in the middle oft that problem as postproduction supervisor, so guessing that this call will last a little bit longer I have to check the options how the call don’t get so expensive, and have to consider the different time zones as well… 🙁 do you think a mail will also lead to fast success?

[Thomas Miller]

Thanks again for your answers. Still a little lack of information for me to make the decision to build the HighPoint RocketRaid2314…
in the third answer you mentioned this:
[Jon Schilling] “Since you already have the Sonnet box, it might be a good idea for you to contact them directly to get the inside scoop.”
Does this refer to that sentence in your second post?:
[Jon Schilling] “You’ll only be able to do RAID 5 on 1 of the D500P boxes as far as I know.”
Does that mean that I can only build one RAID5 with the RocketRaid2314 even when I don’t use them at the same time? An example… connect the first d500p box and convert it to RAID5 and work with it with project x, than disconnect the first d500p box with RAID5 and connect the second one, convert it to RAID5, and use it with project z and so one. If this works it would be sufficient for me…

When one D500P with RAID5 is connected to the 2314 there are three free Esata connectors left… is it possible to use them with normal eSATA HDD’s or RAID0 configurated D500P boxes and do copying between them?

Thanks again.

[Thomas Miller]

Hi Jonathan,

thanks for your fast response. It would be very kind if you could explain why the Highpoint RocketRAID 2314 Card ist the only real option with that enclosure. It has to do with Port Multiplying and the chip the D500P uses for that, right?

This card has four eSata connectors, so is it possible to connect all four D500P storages systems at the same time and generate four RAID5 from each of it? Or ist it only possible to use one D500P as RAID5 at the same time?

There ist also a newer Highpoint card which seams to be quite equal to the one you mentioned, the “RocketRAID Quad eSATA 6Gb/s for Mac”:
https://www.hptmac.com/product.php?_index=65&viewtype=details
…do you think this card is also an option? this is mentioned in the manual: “The Management Utility allows you to setup RAID arrays in data protection mode or in performance tuning mode if you have multiple external hard drives (Oxford) or a SI (Port Multiplier) device.”

Thanks again.

Greetz,
Thomas