external eSata HDD

[kalapea]

I've got MBP with fw400 port so I've ordered eSata express card:
http://www.apiotek.com/Global/Product/Notebook_Add-on_Card/EC-0003D.htm

Should I get Dual Bay enclosure with single eSata port or 2 separate eSata enclosures (one for storage, other for working) considering that this expressCard has 2 eSata ports. Any speed benefits for doing so?

or should I get enclosure with RAID support since this card also supports RAID. Although I have no idea what RAID means:)

[mazymus]

although you can daisy chain esata, i would get enclosure that has two out (one for each hd).

how much did you spend on the card? btw, what benefit were you trying to get from it? mbp has firewire 800 as well, so if you are trying to save directly to external hd, you might save some money and headache and go with an external hd that already has raid 0 or 1 solution.

i was in the same boat as you and researched getting esata card, but the end point for me was it doesnt matter how fast my esata is, my bottle neck is firewire 400 (input), so i'm not gaining any speed by having esata when it comes to saving.

but i have to agree that esata with two hd's at raid 0 will give you an insanely fast data pipeline, welcome to the world of raid. there are many good tutorials on raid, just google.

in short, raid 0 will get two harddrives, add the overall volume, and doubles the write / read speed. for example, raid 0 with two 500 gig hd will give you a logical drive space of 1 TB, with write / read speeds of about double of what you would get when using just one drive (doesnt matter if the original speed was sataI, II, or ide).

Raid 1 is mirror. so get two 500 gig drives, put in raid 1, and you will get end logical drive space of 500. the write / read speed will be slower than when using just one drive. on the other side, one drive is constantly, automatically backing up the other drive.

raid 5, 0+1, 1+0, etc, etc, etc are variations of combining drives to add speed / redundancy.

also, make sure that your esata card actualy does the raid function (hardware solution) as opposed to merely supporting it (sofware solution.) with hardware, your card will do all the work, and will be fast. with software solution, the work is put on your MBP / laptop, therefore not as fast.

The HD i ended up getting is Maxtor 1.5 TB turbo III. It cost about 400$. Comes with two 750Gig raptor drives already in a pretty good enclosure that is vibration proof (well, as well as it can be), and had hardware based RAID 0 or I. SO you can get the full 1.5 TB as RAID 0 with fast transfere rate, or RAID 1 with 750GIG with still pretty damn fast transferes.

Also the drive has Firewire 800 which was another selling point for me (also has firewire 400 and usb2.0). there are other drives out there as well.