I think only Areca controllers boots Mac OS X 64-bit.
There's two companies you should look at; Areca and ATTO Technolgies (ATTO is more expensive though, which is why the Areca is more popular; better price/performance ratio).
Can I run two arrays from one controller ? One for Windows and the other for Mac OS X or do I have to buy to separate controllers ?
Yes (there are conditions, so read on).
But you cannot boot both EFI and BIOS off of the same card. The ROM only contains one or the other (BIOS by default, so if you want to boot OS X, then you'd have to flash it with the EFI portion; file will be on the disk that comes in the box, or you can download it off of the support site).
You can however run multiple arrays for multiple OS's by means of driver support (say boot EFI, but a separate boot disk for Windows, and drivers will allow Windows to access the card and subsequent arrays, so long as the file system is recognized). Don't try to use Mac Drive either (reports of problems), and I suspect Paragon would have similar issues as well. So keep them separate (as I presume you're willing to do).
In theory, you should be able to run 2x separate cards if you need to
for boot purposes (one running EFI for OS X, another with BIOS for Windows/Linux). But I've not tested this out, so there's no way to be sure if it actually works in a MP (can't, as I returned the MP I had, as it wasn't the best solution for me in the end).
I would like to make two arrays:
8xSSD RAID 0 for Mac OS X SL 64-bit (inside one optical bay)
4xSSD RAID 0 for Windows 7 64-bit (inside disk trays)
Do I need two RAID cards or one Areca controller will work and boot for all 12 drives ?
See above.
Given you want to use SSD's, you should narrow yourself to 6.0Gb/s models (given the additional bandwidth per port), so it's either the 1880 series from Areca, or the
R6xx series from ATTO (
do not get the H series, unless you don't mind using Disk Utility, as they're not RAID cards, just SAS controllers - price is a major hint, as they're much cheaper than the RAID versions).
But with that many disks, you'd want the RAID version anyway for the cache.
Another small note; there's a few of the Areca 1880 series that use a DIMM slot for the cache, which means it's upgradable (currently capable of installing a 4GB DIMM).
Now if you get a single card (only boot one OS, not both), and will not need additional ports, you should look at the
ARC-1880ix12 (12 port card, and it does have a DIMM slot for the cache; comes with a 1GB stick). The Areca will also come with internal cables per port (3x, as each cable connects to 4 drives; saves you ~$30 per cable = additional value for that particular brand).
Also, to use the HDD bays, you'd need another adapter from MaxUpgrades (
here).
