Need to build the ultimate mobile storage like this

[zipp05]

Hey all i'm in the market of buying one of these (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111016&Tpk=mr5ct2)

but as i look at the price tag i am thinking to myself i could almost build a whole machine with raid 5,6 support. my only question and problem is there a way to make a computer that can boot up and then mount to my laptop or other desktops with firewire 800 and or esata support as a hardrive. im am looking to build something with identical mounting interfaces (usb,1394b,esata, maybe gigabit.)

i have thought of building a hackitosh with the raid and mounting it through its firewire mounting capability.

i would really apprecciat any help of even post that could point me in the right direction.

the use of this is to store terabytes of information that i would need to read and write form it as fast as possible. such as video editing.

i've used the san digital mr5ct2 and its great but i ended up filling it up even with 5-1tb drives in raid 5. but it worked great being mobile and be able to mount to any computer.

[Xaotic]

Welcome to the forums!

First, a question, does the unit need to to be mobile? Mobility and RAID 5 or 6 are not usually compatible in my mind. It's possible, just not greatly practical. Weight, power and the inherent fragility of RAID systems make this a bit dangerous for transport.

Your least expensive bet is a small server running the RAID configuration and having the array mounted over a gigabit connection. This will allow high transfer speeds and use existing connections on the laptop. OS is a matter of choice, Windows to Windows is easy. Linux to Windows, just use Samba. Linux to Linux is easier, though I would recommend autofs for mounting.

Skip USB, it's too slow. Firewire 800 has decent transfer speeds, but you really need to have a specifically designed interface board, including the RAID controller and cache, to make full use of it. ESATA has essentially the same limitations. The main issue is that you need a mountable interface and drivers for non system based drives. This is the main reason for the high costs of these units. They have to recoup their development expenditures.

[zipp05]

it does need to be mobile unfortunately. and ive also been looking at the gigabit hook up now i maybe pulling information to and from the raid simultaneously and ive heard the esata and firewire800 may be fast because of the protection against packet collisions that would make the gigabit connection slow down? should i be worried about this. transfers i will be doing usually range around the 40 GB range.