Looking for PCI RAID cards or SATA multipliers

[DwightHartnett]

Hello all

Am really starting to get my Hack where I want it but have hit a bit of a brick wall. I'm looking for PCI (Not PCI-E. I'm out of free slots on my mobo) RAID or SATA multiplier cards. I tried this SYBA 4 port SATA PCI card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6815124020

It claimed Mac OSX compatibility on the box, but further (post purchase) research tells me this simply is not the case. I have also found some information claiming that the most connections I will be able to get out of a PCI card is two. can someone confirm this?

This one claims to be OSX compatible, but given my experience with SYBA I am hesitant to throw more cash at them. Can anyone confirm it works?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6816124028

This is another one I am interested in (Ideally I'd like to run one of each). Same question as above.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6816124014

My machine:
OS: 10.7.3
Mobo: GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3
Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6850
RAM: 16 GB Corsair
Power: OCZ ZX series 850w
Boot Drive: OCZ Vertex 3 120GB
Other cards:
- Airport Card (PCI-e)
-Syba Express Card 3/4 (PCI-e)
-Blackmagic Extreme 3D Capture Card (PCIe x8 slot)
-Currently 5 Drives in a hot swap enclosure.

I would like to add an enclosure for 3 more drives in another hot swap enclosure (ideally in RAID 5) and if I can squeeze a second SSD as a back up boot drive in there too I will.
The reason I need so many internal drive is this is my on set computer (work in film). I want to be able to record playback on one RAID set and also be able to back up the master footage to another RAID set of drives. Eventually I'm going to upgrade the mobo, but I am holding out for one with Thunderbolt, so I will be rolling with this one for a while yet. Any thoughts or suggestions of how I can improve this current build would be greatly appreciated. A hack to get the card I bought to work (it's there in the BIOS, I just don't know how to get drivers for it) would be pretty awesome to.

Thanks guys!

D

 

[adrianjgsmith]

Funny, your build is almost identical to mine (down to the Blackmagic and Expresscard addons).

I've been looking at making mine a bit more robust for possible DIT work and think you're right, Thunderbolt will be the way to go.

In the meantime, is your onboard eSATA port free? If so, an eSATA external RAID box might be right. I've been looking at the Akitio Hydra: not horrendously expensive, or ugly as sin, but has four 3.5" bays and can be configured in RAID 5 or 0, with the RAID controller built into the unit. They're easiest to get hold of in the USA, but there are shippers on eBay who export them as well.

Hope that helps.

 

[Going Bald]

you want one of these: http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_sata_x4p.html

which can be purchased here: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sonnet%2 ... SATAIIX4P/

just be careful of the hard drive onboard controller in external USB2.0/eSATA enclosures- if based on the Oxford oxU931DS controller chip, may cause Kernel panic or fail to be recognized.

Best to use a raid box with its own raid controller.

or one of these: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Firmtek/SATA1ESE2/

 

[ectoplasmosis]

PCI is a no-go I'm afraid, with standard 32-bit slots the total bandwidth for the entire bus is 133MB/s. You'll be lucky to hit that with a SATA card taking into account controller and driver overheads.

Waste of time with modern drives, unless you really need more storage and are happy to settle for severely crippled performance.