Areca RAID card?

[Bob Gruen]

I spotted Apple support for Areca high end RAID cards if you flash the card's BIOS with the EFI handles. Am I right that the only way to actually use one of these internal port cards is to extent the PCI bus to an external box?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007607%2050010526&IsNodeId=1&name=Areca

Has anyone ever tried to make a caddie to hold drives and pass the internal cables from the Mac Pro case to the caddie? Any reason it wouldn't work?

Bob

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

For Areca Raid cards is no flashing required. Both work flawlessly in our boutique on windows and Mac boxes.

Hans

 

[Bob Gruen]

For Areca Raid cards is no flashing required. Both work flawlessly in our boutique on windows and Mac boxes.

Hans

but how they work in a Mac box? The drives jack straight into the Mobo...

 

[Jason Samuel]

I've done it. You need some specialized accessories. Here's the key piece:
http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_id=189

Then just get the Areca RAID card and hook up the cables directly to the drives, bypassing the motherboard.

 

[Dustin Cross]

Bob,

Sounds like you have a lot of research to do. People have been routing cables out of Macs and modding cases to cram tons of drives in them for years. There are a lot of options out there other than just using the internal eSata ports.

Start with http://www.maxupgrades.com and http://www.macsales.com


Dusty

 

[Stephen Lovett]

It also depends what MacPro you have, the 2008 for example has an ipass connector (miniSAS) that you can connect directly to the raid card for example, for the newer boxes you need something like the maxupgrade solution or mounting drives in the optical bays. Many ways to skin this cat.

Steve