You are still stuck at 3.0GB/s and one bus, so there comes a point
where multiple drives will hit diminishing returns, but I think a 4
drive, RAID 5, (striped disks with distributed parity) would be so
perfect on a mini. ... [snip]
...
3.0Gb is fast - you can edit HD video on Final Cut with this, beside
others access this MAC mini under GbE anyway
That is what exactly eBOX-R5 doeos. RAID5 on 5x SATA drive, the
capacity can do up to 10TB and no driver need it...as long as there is a
SATA/eSATA port on any OS, you can see create Multiple raid with it, but
not in this case
My only other hack would be RAID 1 on very fast drives on the two
internals, but using external 3.5" drives. Using something like
SoftRaid, you can still gain speed with the shared read load across
two drives, write speed only marginally slowed down. Servers mostly
read, so this is perfect. Even database writes are ram based first.
I would use the hardware RAID 0/1 eSU2-RD to create a RAID1 for other
SATA port...
I would then use another RAID 0 Stripe on the FireWire ports, for the
speed, and something like rsync as a cold backup of the primary.
Depending on how all this goes, if I can get enough data on this, I
will be putting a custom 1U case into production that does one method
or the other. If PM is available, it just got a heck of a lot
simpler. The hardest part is going to be making an adapter than can
plug to the mobo via a y cable to support clean shut down of the
drives that will of course run off ATX power.
The Mac Mini as a car stereo guys have been doing this to get ignition
based starts and stops of the Mac Mini in their car. The only trouble
is they want an arm and a leg for a PSU along with it, and they will
not sell the Y cable alone. I have found a few sources to make me a
custom Y cable in 100 qty orders, a quick poke with a scope should
tell me all I need, though the car audio Y cable sort of did all the
research for me.
