Apple quietly debuts Mac Pro RAID card

[Published Tuesday, August 7th]

Alongside a slew of other announcements today, Apple quietly introduced a new RAID card for the Mac Pro, available as an option from the online Apple Store.

Apple says the card offers up to 304MB/s of sequential read performance in RAID 0, adding:

"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 256MB 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. To enable your Mac Pro for hardware RAID, select the Mac Pro RAID card option and two or more hard drives in bays 1 through 4. Each RAID level has minimum requirements for the number of hard drives"

• RAID 0 (striping): Two to four hard drives; Maximum performance and capacity for the most demanding I/O requirements
• RAID 1 (mirroring): Two hard drives, Maximum protection for critical data
• RAID 5: Three or four hard drives, Data protection, up to 199MB/s of sequential read performance, and efficient capacity utilization
• RAID 0 1: Four hard drives, A mirror of striped drive pairs providing performance and data protection

Apple adds:

"For optimal disk utilization in a RAID set, all hard drives should be the same size. Your Mac Pro system ships with each hard drive individually configured in the Enhanced JBOD level with Mac OS X installed on the drive in bay 1. Using Apple's RAID Utility software, you can migrate the drives into a RAID set without reinstalling Mac OS X or reformatting the drives, or you can customize your RAID volumes to meet your exact requirements."

The card is priced at $999.

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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