SHOOTOUT:
RAID 0 vs RAID 3 vs RAID 5 vs RAID 6
HighPoint RocketRAID 3522

Originally posted April 11th, 2008, by rob-ART morgan, mad scientist

We chronicled the features of the new HighPoint RocketRAID 3522 in a previous article but this time we wanted to show you the difference in speed between eight Samsung Spinpoint F1 one terabyte drives in various RAID sets. In each case, we used the browser based RAID Manager provided by HighPoint to define the RAID set.

The enclosures used were the FirmTek SeriTek/2enN4 4 bay eSATA enclosure and the Wiebetech RTX 400 four bay eSATA enclosure. Each was attached to the RocketRAID 3522 using a special cable with a mini SAS connector at one end and four eSATA connectors at the other. Test platform was the "early 2008" Mac Pro 3.2GHz. We installed the RR3522 in slot 3 (x4).

ANALYSIS
As you can see by the speeds, when using eight drives like the Samsung Spinpoint F1, the speeds are fast enough in all three RAID modes to capture and playback uncompressed HD video without dropping frames. With the pricing of the RR3522, the Samsung drives, and the enclosures, there's no need to "live on the edge" with RAID 0 sets. You can now enjoy the "safety net" of RAID 5 or 6 when capturing, editing, and storing your precious video and audio projects.

RELATED LINKS
See Bare Feats' test of two, three, and four drive SAS RAID versus two, three, and four drive SATA RAID inside the Mac Pro "Harpertown."

We used the popular AJA Kona System Test 2 to measure the speed using 1920x1080 10 bit test with a 4GB test size.

Lloyd Chambers created Disktester which we have found to be a useful predictor of video capture/playback performance. We used the Area Test to simulate an empty and 90% full volume.

WHERE TO BUY THE HighPoint ROCKETRAID 3522
Order the from Other World Computing and they will ship it the same day

It's not on their website yet, but ask Small Dog Electronics and Trans International about it

WHERE TO BUY SATA 3G DRIVES for your MAC PRO

MacGurus (host adapters, enclosures, drives, cables)

Other World Computing (host adapters, enclosures, drives)

Small Dog Electronics (host adapters, enclosures, drives)

TransIntl (host enclosures, drives, internal mounting kits)

WHERE TO BUY SATA ENCLOSURES compatible with the RocketRAID 3522

FirmTek sells the SeriTek/2eEN4 that we used on their company online store.
It's also sold by OWC.

Wiebetech sells the RTX-400H-QJ that we used on their company online store

TransIntl sells the miniG series of enclosures that look like miniature Mac Pros.

MacGurus sells the "Burly" line of enclosures. Ask them about their "non-PM" version.

WHERE TO BUY A MAC PRO
When ordering products from Apple Store USA, please click THIS TEXT LINK or any Apple display ad as your "portal" to the online store. In so doing, you help to support Bare Feats.

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© 2008 Rob Art Morgan
"BARE facts on Macintosh speed FEATS"
Email , the webmaster