Need opinions, please RAID options

[Mark Phelan]

OK, so I'm not made of money and have to make a choice as to what I am going to start out with for my system. This won't be the end-all, but it needs to fit within my particular workflow.

While I'm still teetering about waiting for the new Macs which are sure to come out sometime between November and January in my opinion, I'm forced to buy a stop-gap Intel Mac to replace my G5. I've toyed with getting an iMac for the next few months just to have an Intel machine that I could then later use as a monitor or give it to my wife to use, before I upgrade to a better desktop setup.

My real question is about RAIDs. I'm considering the CalDigit HDElement or the G-Tech G-Speed eS. They look similar on paper, I can get the G-Tech for a large discount through family working for Apple. I lean towards the CalDigit for now, but money talks. Any thoughts or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

[jimhare]

I just got the 3Ware Side Car for my Mac Pro (also works on G5) and it's been really good for the money. Cost under $400 for the chassis and card and takes 4 SATA drives. I filled it with 750GB drives so I have a 3TB RAID that goes about 200MB/second and the whole thing was well under $1000.

 

[M Hsu]

granite digital enclosure, highpoint 2322 raid card and 4 1 terabyte samsung drives, RAID 5 working nicely for me. about $1500 depending on how much you search.

also heard that just adding drives inside the tower and using the internal raid option works too in HD at least.

 

[Mark Phelan]

Thanks, how are you connected to your computer with those setups?

 

[Jean Déraps]

I'm also looking into buying "affordable" RAID/SATA storage...one of the items I've been looking at is the Firmtek Seritek 5PM with a Highpoint Rocketraid 2522 hardware RAID card...anyone have any comments/suggestions whether this would be an acceptable solution?

AMUG review: http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/firmtek/5pm/

Thanks