RAID set and JBOD on same controller card?
• RAID 5 consisting of 8 discs, 4 inside 5.1 MacPro with MaxUpgrade's kit in use for SAS connectivity , and 4 more discs in a 1U rackmount SAS chassis, possibly OWC's new 'trayless' unit, or another similar chassis.
• Areca RAID controller ARC-1880ix-12 is what I'm leaning towards at this time.
I don't have the cash or demand (yet) for a system in a huge expansion chassis and 24 drives, but my the main thing I want to know, (since I've never had this many discs to play around with before) is when I create an 8 disc RAID 5 Array for storage, can I also connect another external chassis to the controller as a JBOD unit and have those drives therein function independently, with swap capability of single volumes? This would be very handy for individual cleint-drive backups and would free up my eSATA interface for file ingest and more flexibility.
I do know I would have to get an adapter to run more than one external SAS connection cause the Card only has one External SAS port as is. I may go with a different card with more channels for more future expansion, but it will more than likely have more internal ports than external.
2009 MacPro 8core, Mac OS X (10.6.6)