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Poor man's external RAID 5

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DavidJSwanson

Guest
I'm in a situation where I would like to use a powermac G5 on location, but this G5 is also full of valuable data. So i've been thinking about getting some kind of external RAID 5 storage system, and being the cheap person that i am I find many prebuilt solutions to be too expensive for my taste. (I know i can't get around the price of the hard drives themselves, but the associated hardware is pricey).

What I do have is a 7 bay SCSI enclosure that used to have CD-ROM's in it, and was thinking that i could fill it with hard drives, use some SATA to firewire adaptors and possible a firewire hub, all tucked inside the case to make an external firewire enclosure.

My next thought is to just use external SATA cables and an add on card in the G5 to link them all up, set up a RAID in OS X. I don't know though how that would work with the drives being unplugged periodically would the array work properly? Also I would like to be able to move the array between computers if need be.

Also, is there somewhere that I can find an external RAID controller that would suit my application? I mean one that would hardware RAID disks to like a firewire connection that can run off a standard power connector?

Also Firewire bandwidth vs. SATA bandwidth

I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on this, and I'll most likely be doing this so i'd be able to post pics for everyone :)
 
rman

rman


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I have a feeling, with the time to build, install and purchases the parts to build this setup. It will end up cheaper to buy a ready to setup environment. My guess is that the raid controller maybe the expensive part.
 

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