[Leica] RAID controllers?

[jbm at jbm.org (Jeff Moore)]

2008-08-18-18:50:33 Ric Carter:
> what about Drobo?

Never used a Drobo.

Is that the dumbed-down second-city version of an Infrant ReadyNAS?

  http://www.readynas.com/

Now these, I know and trust.  By no means wickedly speedy, but entirely
decent performance for a network-attached device, and priced
appropriately for what you get (which is low power consumption, low
noise for the non-rackmount versions, and good solid performance for a
few bucks more than the dimestore somebody-stuck-a-disk-in-a-router-case
brands, but far less than iron from one of the "enterprise" lines.

A little fiddly to first configure the shares on (and that may have
changed by the current software release), but just quietly solid
after that.

I've been running one for 2-3 years (through a successful array rebuild
after replacing a bad disk, and another migration to an entire new set
of larger disks).  I still have my data.  Make sure you stick it on a
supported UPS, with which the ReadyNAS can communicate via USB so it
knows if it needs to shut itself down in a powerfail situation.

I use the NAS shares for second copies of photos, and for my iTunes
library (which a Mac writes, and a Linux box running SlimServer reads).
I wouldn't, though, consider using those shares as active, working disk
space while editing photos and such.  Not fast enough, at least for my
taste.

But earlier a hardware RAID array inside a Mac Pro was being discussed.
I allowed myself that luxury when I moved to an Intel Mac about six
months ago.  Definitely a nice way to live, and far far faster (if
you're on that machine) than a NAS off over the wire.  No complaints
about RAID-5 performance, even with an array using only three spindles.
(I had a superstitious fear, from years of experience with other
hardware, of booting from a volume within a RAID array, and stuck in a
Raptor as a boot device.  I might revisit that decision.)

 -Jeff