Atto H680 w/ SoftRIAD... good idea?

[Eric Stracke]

I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts about using SoftRAID with a SAS enclosure and an Atto H680 in an effort to save a few bucks instead of getting the R680.

Has anyone run such a setup successfully on a MacPro tower?

I'm thinking about doing that as my main edit drive, a 4 drive raid 0, and another 4 drive raid 5 for other media and assets.

 

[Jarek Zabczynski]

I'd say you're only asking for trouble. Don't skimp on your RAID solution.

Softraid is great, I use it for my internal drives. But definitely go with a hardware RAID solution for your main storage pool.

 

[Eric Stracke]

That defintley seems like some good advice and probably not the best way to cut costs. Thanks Jarek.

I'm still curious if anyone has had success with this solution though. It's been hard to find people talking about doing it this way, maybe for a good reason.

 

[Nick Pasquariello]

It's hard to say.

SoftRAID has been around for a while, and has some neat features. I just got a new Thunderbolt RAID from OWC (the ThunderBay 4), which relies on SoftRAID. It's smaller than the Pegasus R4 (thankfully), and I use it in the same context: as my on-set extra backup on my DIT cart. The jobs I'm on rarely require me to keep a copy of the data, but I'm starting to do so since with this method (and my new nMP) I'm not losing any bandwidth and the additional equipment is minimal.

So far, no issues. But "so far" = 3 weeks, and hasn't been used as a heavy editorial or grading drive, but rather a storage location.

 

[Jarek Zabczynski]

I would probably use it as a storage solution as Nick mentioned above, but not as my main edit drive that needs to be rock solid and online 24/7.