In collaboration with Steven F. Woolf, technical guru and producer of the upcoming videoblog Jet Set Show, I bring you "How to build your own external SATA RAID Array."

Randall's product highlight of the Iomega XL got me thinking.  That's a pretty good option for external RAID, and I'm glad to see more of these kinds of products hitting the market, including some network storage devices like the iNAS.  But if you're a little more adventurous and not afraid to roll up your sleeves a bit, you can create your own custom external hardware-based RAID array using SATA.  Yup, external SATA.


Why SATA?  Well, for one thing it's faster than external Firewire.  Using the process we will detail, you are basically running an external hardware-based RAID array from the internal SATA bus via the PCI slot.  For another thing, it's a helluva lot cheaper than SCSI.   And for a third thing, depending on the kind of RAID array you want to configure, you can save a bunch of money (although this is not true for all configurations).  And fourth, aren't custom tech projects just more fun?  :)

Assuming you already have a PC ready to go, the first thing you need to build your external SATA RAID array is a reasonably-priced PCI SATA RAID card such as the LSI Megaraid SATA for $230.  This card will have 4 internal SATA connections and pretty decent hardware-based RAID support.  Keep in mind that good RAID cards tend to be worth the extra money.  Cheap ones can create bottlenecks that defeat the purpose of your array.

Sadly, the selection of Mac-compatible RAID cards is not very good.  You have prohibitively expensive ones at the high-end, and no-hardware-based RAID support for the SATA host adapters on the low end (such as the Sonnet Tempo-X8 SATA Host Card for around $300), or mediocre hardware acceleration (such as the Highpoint RocketRAID 1810A for around $180).  Software-based RAID is a lot less attractive than hardware-based RAID if top performance is your goal.  Post a comment below if you know a good (and affordable) Mac RAID PCI SATA card.

Next up - Part 2: Bridging the Internal to the External