Apple software Raid

[Peter Osinski]

I am running a Mac Pro early 2008 model with 2 x quad core 2.8hz

I am really going to be tight on cash from saving up for one of the dmsc's so I was wondering if this could help me save some money. I was wondering if it was possible to just put in 4 1TB harddrives in the hard drive bays on my mac pro and a 500GB in the optical drive as seen here


http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/tips/MacPro_HD_in_optical_drive_bay/MacPro_HD_in_OpticalBay.html

and just set up the 4 drives in a software Raid 0, and boot from the drive in the optical bay.

I know it will use up some cpu power but would this be a good temporary solution? I plan on getting a raid enclosure and card in the long run and I could just drop the drives into that when I get it.

Anyone forsee any problems?

p.s. - yes I will back up my data

 

[Rainer Fritz]

spend some money for a good storage solution, you will need it in the future anyway. 4 or 5 bay enclosures and a raid controller will cost not that much and you will have a solid storage drive....

 

[Craig Schober]

rainer is right. the drive speeds and densities will only improve and prices lower by the time you are ready for the bays and controller hardware - the items that won't change much over time. your drives will be worth much less when you really need them down the line if you buy them now in anticipation.

 

[Brandon Kraemer]

Peter,

Technically this will work. Rainer and Craig have decent points about the value of that approach, but you can RAID internal SATA or SAS drives and work from them with good results. One of our offline suites has this configuration, and the drives were rather cheap.

 

[Sean Rawls]

Yep, go for a hardware raid configuration if you can. However, I have my boot drive in the second optical bay and haven't had any issues.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Software RAID-0 with 3 or 4 drives works just fine, same with a drive in the optical bay. A 5.25" mounting bracket for a 3.5" HDD is all you need to put an HDD there -- these cost about $5-$8. CPU overhead is low, just have a good backup solution in place (you should have this no matter what type of RAID storage you have).

Early 2008 models typically have ATA interfaces in the optical bays. So you will need to buy a PATA/IDE drive or you can buy a PATA to SATA adapter and use a SATA HDD.

Rainer and Craig are correct that a separate RAID card is better.

Whatever you do, don't get the Apple RAID card. It's a completely overpriced piece of crap.