The Mac Pro RAID Card offers improved storage performance and data protection to your Mac Pro system - up to 553MB/s of sequential read performance in RAID 0. Ideal for video and creative professionals with demanding storage needs as well as for tower server applications, this hardware RAID option supports RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 0+1, and Enhanced JBOD. It has 512MB of cache and an integrated 72-hour battery for protecting the RAID cache. The card occupies the top PCI Express slot (slot 4) and connects to the four internal drive bays.

RAID Requirements

To enable your Mac Pro for hardware RAID, install the Mac Pro RAID Card and two or more hard drives in bays 1 through 4. Each RAID level has minimum requirements for the number of hard drives:

Enhanced JBOD

Drive Requirements: One to four drives
Benefit: A non-RAID configuration with the ability to migrate to a RAID set at any time

RAID 0 (striping)

Drive Requirements: Two to four hard drives
Benefit: Maximum performance and capacity for the most demanding I/O requirements

RAID 1 (mirroring)

Drive Requirements: Two hard drives
Benefit: Maximum protection for critical data

RAID 5

Drive Requirements: Three or four hard drives
Benefit: Data protection, high performance,, and efficient capacity utilization

RAID 0+1

Drive Requirements: Four hard drives
Benefit: A mirror of striped drive pairs providing performance and data protection
The Mac Pro RAID Card supports the creation of multiple RAID sets in a system and multiple volumes per RAID set. For optimal disk utilization in a RAID set, all hard drives should be the same size. Using Apple's RAID Utility software (included with Mac OS X v10.5), you can migrate the drives into a RAID set without reinstalling Mac OS X or reformatting the drives, and you can customize your RAID volumes to meet your exact requirements.

System Requirements

Requires Mac Pro (early 2009) and Mac OS X v10.5.6 or later. The Mac Pro RAID Card offers improved storage performance and data protection to your Mac Pro system up to 553MB/s of sequential read performance in RAID 0. Ideal for video and creative professionals with demanding storage needs as well as for tower server applications, this hardware RAID option supports RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 0+1, and Enhanced JBOD. It has 512MB of cache and an integrated 72-hour battery for protecting the RAID cache. The card occupies the top PCI Express slot (slot 4) and connects to the four internal drive bays.