What would you recommend regarding Raid and backup storage? Goal is to minimize risk of data loss and to speed hard drive access to the extent the two goals are compatible; minimizing risk of data loss is the priority.
Obviously, external back up options include the new wireless router/wireless storage unit (500Gig or 1TB) from Apple, or good old external drives. To use XServe Raid external drives, the Mac Pro requires a $700 fibre optic card.
The regular Raid controller for the Mac Pro is a hefty $800. A plus to the Raid controller is that if SAS drives become available with greater storage capacity at a reasonable cost, the Raid controller is required to use SAS drives.
My current Core 2 Duo ASUS motherboard has the Raid controller built into it. Running four 500 gig drives (Western Digial, 16 MB Cache) with Raid (whether 0,1, or 5) never seemed to do anything but slow my computer.
Would you use Raid 5 with four drives to optimize both data security and access speed? Would you recommend the regular Raid card, the XServe Raid card, or another option for backup and, if appropriate, Raid?
I generally replace PC case fans with quieter, higher air flow, fans, with silicon or rubber gaskets — even on Lian Li or Cooler Max cases. What’s the quality/noise like on OEM Apple fans? Would you replace them (or gasket them)?
I have not gotten into Raid too much... but the Raid 5 or the Raid 10 (1+0) would be the best trade-off combination of speed of access and reliability.
The most important thing about data back up is to do it and to make sure that a fairly recent copy (economically recent... a backup that will not cost to much to bring back up to date by recreating recent work since the backup event) is stored off-site. For some businesses, an economically viable backup is once a week... some once a day... others can use a once a month backup. Some cannot survive any data loss.
I once had a client who backed up religiously. One day thieves broke into his business and stole his computer... and his back up drives... and all of his backup copies which he stored right next to his computer. The wireless Time Machine system can allow you to backup your system without having an obvious connection to the backup system for a thief to follow.
If you have a fast enough broadband connection to the internet, you can place your backup off site for ultimate security (the building burns down, your state falls into the nearest Ocean...) by up loading it to a secure site.
Data integrity is another issue. There the internal mirrored raid 1 the Mac offers may be of value. The internal raid does not solve the problem of a stolen or destroyed computer though.
The type of data you are working with is also important in deciding what type or backup you need to utilize. If you are accessing a monolithic database the backup requirements can be different than if you are accessing large numbers of separate files. The size of your average file is also important... for example, backing up incremental changes in a large video file may not be a candidate for WiFi backup or Time Machine, it would simply take too long for the bandwidth to handle... but thousands of little files might be.
Keep in mind that copying gigabytes of data even over high speed fibre channel connections to high RPM drives will still take surprisingly large amounts of time to accomplish and plan accordingly.
As for the cost of an external Xserve Raid and the fibre optic card to drive it, that is really very small compared to the cost of replacing the lost or damaged data. The hot-swapability of the xServe drives allows you to use one as a transportable backup that can be taken off site as your "economically viable backup" and the previous backup traded back into the slot for use.
Concerning the slow down you experienced on your ASUS with an internal MB raid controller... that may not be a problem on a Mac. The Mac handles multitasking better than Windows and, depending on the type of data access you are using, you may not see any slowdown at all. With a multi-core Mac, the OS should be able to shift the drive access overhead to the least used core.
I generally replace PC case fans with quieter, higher air flow, fans, with silicon or rubber gaskets — even on Lian Li or Cooler Max cases. What’s the quality/noise like on OEM Apple fans? Would you replace them (or gasket them)?
The Macs cases and fans are engineered for efficient cooling with low noise... and the custom designed fans are generally not replaceable by third party fans. You really have to see the engineering to see why. Mac cases are built to very close tolerances and I doubt you would need to or could add any gaskets. My experience with my G5 tower which has nine fans, is that I have heard the fans only once... when I deliberately stressed the dual G5s with some real heavy duty processing. Other than that, my cat's breathing is noisier than the my noisiest Mac.
On the other hand, one earlier G4 Mac tower was not so affectionately known as the Wind tunnel Mac...
I hope this helps