3rd Party RAID Card options - must make a decision

I've been on the Mac with NLE for high end corporate work since early 90's but only now moving from a 10 bit uncompressed SD edit suite to FCP and I need your valued feedback for a Mac Pro arriving soon. I've spent hours poring over all forums, Apple and otherwise, to select the right raid solution. The situation is that we will edit NTSC into 2009 and make the transition to HD later in the year. So, the initial set-up will be three 1 TB Seagate 7200.11's with a 320GB for O/S (and perhaps more in optical bay for scratch, etc.) I prefer to install the three video drives internally and go with a hardware driven card (Raid 5) that also provides support for external drives if we add later. Caldigit's is the only card that appears to cover all the misc. requirements but the forums list issues with 3rd party storage vs Caldigit's box. Other cards have pros and cons so I'm asking you to tell me what is working in your shop and also whether I should just purchase a 3rd party external enclosure and set up the Seagates there. If so, card recommendation is also critical.

Hi,
I find installing a RAID 5 inside the Mac Pro has too many limitations. I would rather keep the boot drive in its own internal bay and be able to mount a boot camp disk or other backup disks internally when needed.
A better solution for most users is to mount the RAID 5 externally. The FirmTek SeriTek/5PM enclosure and the HighPoint RocketRAID 2314 combination provides a high quality external RAID 5 solution that is quiet, fast and dependable. You can learn more about it here:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/firmtek/5pm/
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-5pm/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/2314/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000NAXGIU/arizomacinusergr
There are other solutions that work well too. However, the controllers tend to be much more expensive. RAID 5 users looking for a quality solution at a very reasonable price will find the SeriTek/5PM and RR2314 combination works well.
If you don't mind paying more the Areca ARC-1680ix-12 SAS controller reviewed by AMUG is another high performance option that works well with SATA direct connect enclosures. You can read more about it here:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/areca/1680ix12/
Have fun!

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