Is it possible to do hardware raid in a Mac Pro?

[QuantumLo0p]

Has anyone seen how to do hardware raid in the new Mac Pro? From what I understand, the drives are mounted in trays that slide into place and there are no cables to deal with. They simply slide in and the power/data connectors make their connections.

My question is, how do you set up hardware raid when the drives slide in the way they do? Can they slide in backwards so sata cables can be connected to a sata/scsi card?

I hope Apple didn't do what I fear they did. It's nice to do hardware raid internally but if not, it's probably not a show stopper.


Dual 2.7 G5
4.5 GB RAM
.5 TB raid 0
Nvidia 6800
23" ACD
a dancing hula girl

 

[kered22]

I was reading an article yesterday on this and the motherboard does support hardware RAID, but Apple chose to go with software RAIDs only.

But with the way the drives slide in, it does make it difficult for using a PCI Express card. Looking at the pictures of the MacPro, the drive connectors are screwed in, so I guess you could unscrew those, move them out of the way and run cables from a PCI Express card. But I have no idea how much mickey mousing it's going to take to get something like that to work.

 

[damado]

Out of curiosity, what would be apple's logic with going with software raid instead of hardware?

 

[QuantumLo0p]

Perhaps only with an external enclosure?

Out of curiosity, what would be apple's logic with going with software raid instead of hardware?

Just cost. Software raid can yield a performance increase but nothing like the increase you can get from hardware raid. You can do software raid on the Powermac but you have install a sata or scsi card to be able to do hardware raid. Kered22 mentioned the Mac Pro could do hardware raid but I don't know if it's using the OEM setup.

I am doing software raid 0 on my G5 and there was a noticable gain. At first I had planned to do hardware raid 0 with two or three Raptor drives but after a while I decided to just do software raid and save for a Mac Pro. My current raid setup has the same performance as my 15K scsi drive in my Dell Precision 650. Not bad I'd say, plus I have half a terabyte of space.

Anyway, I was looking at the Mac Pro and wondering exactly how hardware raid could be done while using the standard drive bays since the drives aren't really accessable to attach cables to. They point the opposite direction and slide into the chasis.

Perhaps Apple intends to force people to use an external enclosure? Or maybe the OEM configuration supports hardware raid?

 

[Mr. Mister]

Out of curiosity, what would be apple's logic with going with software raid instead of hardware?

August 6th:

"So Mike, you tested the hardware RAID and everything, right?"

"Uh, no, Tom was doing the hardware RAID."

"Tom, you did it right?"

"What?"

"Finished hardware RAID."

"Oh, I thought Mike was doing that!"

 

[MacsAttack]

I was reading an article yesterday on this and the motherboard does support hardware RAID, but Apple chose to go with software RAIDs only.

But with the way the drives slide in, it does make it difficult for using a PCI Express card. Looking at the pictures of the MacPro, the drive connectors are screwed in, so I guess you could unscrew those, move them out of the way and run cables from a PCI Express card. But I have no idea how much mickey mousing it's going to take to get something like that to work.

Word going around is there is a bug in the Core 2 Duo (Woodcrest) CPU that stops RAID working correctly.

So perhaps Apple just decided to avoided all sorts of support problems by not implementing it. Perhaps the next Mac Pro refresh...

...Next Tuesday?