RAID info needed!

[James Steele]

Okay... ordered this card:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Highpoin ... RRAID2722/

Specs of the card:

• RAID level 0, 1, 5, 10, 50 and JBOD
• Multiple RAID Support
• BIOS Boot to RAID with point-to-point connectivity or through port multiplier
• Quick, Background or Foreground Initialization

I may post more info a bit later looking for some suggestions on how to best utilize the RAID. I want to use it for Final Cut Pro X projects and maybe DP projects as well. Also I suppose I could move my sample library a drive or pair of drives in the RAID enclosure. I guess since they drives connect to a PCIe card they could get more bandwidth than connected on the internal SATA bus, but then not sure if that's even a factor with conventional drives? Of course, maybe if I pair a couple drives up, that would make a difference.

I'm pretty sure I have 7 drives in the enclosure. I'm hoping to put together SOME kind of plan beforehand and decide whether I want redundancy, etc. It could be rather complicated.

By the way... I hadn't posted this link before because there had only been "1 available" for a while and I didn't have the $$$ for it until today and it was $60 less than anywhere else I found online. Still, it sat there for a while so it's probably close to an EOL product. If I did not get the drive enclosure free with 7 drives free, I might not be buying a card like this.

[mikehalloran]

Okay... ordered this card:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Highpoin ... RRAID2722/

Specs of the card:

• RAID level 0, 1, 5, 10, 50 and JBOD
• Multiple RAID Support
• BIOS Boot to RAID with point-to-point connectivity or through port multiplier
• Quick, Background or Foreground Initialization

... I guess since they drives connect to a PCIe card they could get more bandwidth than connected on the internal SATA bus, but then not sure if that's even a factor with conventional drives?


Of course, maybe if I pair a couple drives up, that would make a difference...

It all depends on the type of RAID and the number of drives being used. Yes, it's definitely a factor.

[James Steele]

Right. I'm pretty sure there are 7 1TB drives in there. Just trying to figure out how to allocate them and what kind of RAID to use.

[James Steele]

Well, my Highpoint RocketRaid 2722 card arrived today from OWC and so far it's been a disappointment. I dutifully went the the website, got all the documentation and current driver and software installers and I'm stuck. I've run the latest driver installer and verified that the appropriate kext IS there:



However, it plainly is not loading. Disk Utility does not show the drives in the connected enclosure and System Report shows no driver loaded for the card in Slot 2 (which should appear by name if the driver loads).



I tried opening up a ticket on Highpoint's web support system, but my serial number didn't work, so I called OWC, got that straightened out and the OWC tech support guy gave me Highpoint's phone number. When you choose "tech support" for the menu, it informs they only give web-based support. So kudos to companies like MOTU that still answer the phone.

Highpoint's tech support is supposed to be notoriously bad, so I wonder if I will ever get this going frankly. I'm not an expert at this stuff and the RAID enclosure is a mystery to me, but was given to me by someone very savvy with computers, so I think it should be kosher. Furthermore, a PCI card driver should just load if the card is present, regardless of whether anything is attached anyway, yes?

[James Steele]

UPDATE!!! OWC SENT ME THE WRONG CARD?!!

I received a reply from Highpoint Tech Support. They told me I had a Rocket2722 instead of RocketRAID 2722... I checked my invoice from OWC... I BOUGHT a RocketRAID 2722... that's what the invoice says. However, I just checked the box of the card they sent me and it's a Rocket2722. OWC customer support is now closed. Supposedly I got the last card they had at that price! Grrrr!!!!

[James Steele]

Okay... the CORRECT card arrived today. I had a question:

I have a 7 drive array formatted as RAID 5. I figured I'd use all the drives for maximum speed. After you've created the array with the High Point web-based app, you still have to initialize this "virtual disk" with Disk Utility. I'm wondering if there's any reason I can't just create partitions on this 6TB array, like:

DP Projects
Sample Libraries
FCPX Projects

[monkey man]

Hip hip... array! Oh...

Man, this stuff is Greek to me. Sorry James. Carry on, brother.