What is the point of SCSI in a Mac Pro

[samsc]

Kind of along the same lines...

Has anyone seen the new hardware RAID card available with new MacPro's?

-s

you can only buy this as a built to order option with a new machine - you cannot buy it separately - and apparently - i have been told - you cannot use non-apple hard drives either-
so its not an upgrade option.

[RedLightning]

you can only buy this as a built to order option with a new machine - you cannot buy it separately - and apparently - i have been told - you cannot use non-apple hard drives either-
so its not an upgrade option.

Interesting...I didn't notice that as a requirement...

Hardware RAID cards are available from other vendors, I was a little more curious as to whether it would improve speed.

-s

[samsc]

Interesting...I didn't notice that as a requirement...

Hardware RAID cards are available from other vendors, I was a little more curious as to whether it would improve speed.

-s

at the bottom of this obscure article

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306231

Question: What drives does Apple support with the Mac Pro RAID Card and the Xserve RAID Card?

Answer: Only Apple drives are supported with the Mac Pro RAID Card and the Xserve RAID Card.

other drives might work. apple uses the word 'support'...


This one is likely to work much better - as it has a lot of RAM for buffering - i havent seen another raid card which does this- the others dont bother.
without this buffering the other raid cards are pointless - RAID is not faster than a single disc for catalyst.
And the performance of single SATA discs is not good enough.
Unless you are doing uncompressed video- or need only 3 layers to playback.
I test these systems day in day out for the last 4 years.

Gareth posted something yesterday about a RAID he had made - but he really only shows how poorly they work most of the time.

I can get at least 8 layers of DV out of my XServe RAID - for a 2 disc set.
No unbuffered internal raid is ever going to come close to this.