I’m keenly interested in the CalDigit RAID card for the Mac Pro. It looks like a much better solution than the Apple RAID card to the storage problem — a First World problem if ever there was one — facing certain Mac Pro owners.
I’ve asked myself, “Now that you have this beast, how do you fill up its drive bays?”
The answer is somewhat difficult. You can put four drives in the bays, but in order to get a single volume, you’d minimally need software RAID. For example, you could configure a RAID 1+0 volume with Disk Utility. You could get the expensive Apple RAID card. You might populate a Drobo and connect it via FireWire. Or, you could get a CalDigit RAID card — which is the only bootable, fully-internal RAID controller I’m aware of that competes with Apple’s card.
One advantage of a solution that fits completely inside the Mac Pro case is that you have one less power cord to deal with. In this sense, the CalDigit RAID Card seems preferable to a Drobo. The CalDigit card interfaces directly with the Mac Pro’s own SATA ports, so you can use the existing internal drive bays and slide drives into the normal SATA/power connectors.
I just need to find one on sale …