I just finished hooking up my new 7.5 Tarabyte RAID storage system (3.75 TB of usable space mirrored). I usually fill up about one Tarabyte per year with just jpeg images so I'm hoping this setup will last me at least 2 more years. This system came to about $5K including tax. Not cheap, but it's built for professional use and I've had too many consumer brand drives (like Lacie) act up on me so I wanted to step it up. A video editor (who also works as a mac genius at the Fashion Island Apple Store) told me to buy Sonnet enclosures and Seagate drives. He said that he has never had a drive fail on him in 6 years of editing on the same system.

I had some help setting this up from Jeff LaPlante a photographer friend of mine who is extremely knowledgable in Mac harddrive systems. Those of you who are interested in putting something together something like this here's what you'll need and how you set it up:

2 Fusion 500P 5-bay enclosures ($499 each)
1 Tempo SATA X4P Serial ATA host adapter for PCI-X ($299) (this works with the G5 tower but check to make sure you don't need the Tempo SATA E4p for PCI Express)
10 Seagate Barracuda 750GB Harddrives (I picked these up at my local Fry's Electronics for $339 each totaling $3,390 for 10 drives)

Note: You'll need an available PCI slot in your G5 desktop computer for the host adapter mentioned above.

The setup is fairly straightforward and simple. Here's what you do:

1. Install the Seagate harddrives into your Fusion 500P enclosures using the instructions included (this is like playing with Legos - very simple)
2. Install your Tempo SATA host adapter (make sure to shut down your computer and unplug the power cable, open the side, and snap in the adapter - again, very simple unless you drop a screw down inside your computer and it takes 20 minutes to recover like I did!)
3. Connect your enclosures to the adapter you just installed using the eSATA cables provided with your enclosures.
4. Turn on the power to both your computer and your 2 enclosures (if an alert comes up saying that you have connected a drive that your computer does not recognize select the "ignore" button)
5. Open Disk Utility (a program in your Applications/Utilities folder)
6. Select the RAID tab on the right and then drag 5 drives from one of your enclosures to the RAID window. (note: you may want to turn off the power of one enclosure to verify that you are selecting 5 drives from a single enclosure)
7. In the RAID Set Name field, type in a name for your RAID (I named mine "Fusion500P#1")
8. In the Volume Format drop down menu, choose "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)"
9. In the Raid Type drop down menu, choose "Striped RAID Set"
10. Click "Create" (See image below for results. Note: The "Create" button changes to an "Update" button once the RAID has been created)
11. Do this again for the next enclosure using the 5 drives inside it and name it "Fusion500P#2" (you may want to turn off your other enclosure so you select the correct drives)
12. Click "Create"
13. Turn on both enclosures and go back to Disk Utility
14. Add both RAID Sets to a new Raid Set and this time choose "Mirrored RAID Set" in the RAID Type drop down menu and name your RAID Set something like "Client RAID" (This step will mirror both enclosures so you have absolute redundancy)
15. Click "Create" (See image below for results. Note: The "Create" button changes to an "Update" button once the RAID has been created)
You're done! Now you have 7.5 TB Mirrored RAID Drive giving your 3.75 TB of usable space that is always backed up.

Remember, you should also back up your files to DVD and store them in a safe to protect your files from burglary. You should also have an off-site backup. I back-up my jpg files off-site with Pictage and my important business files including calendar, contacts, and client contracts off-site with my .Mac account.

Jeff LaPlante uses a RAID 5 system that is actually cheaper, gives you fast file transfers and has better disk efficiency but does not provide as much redundancy as the Mirrored RAID Set. His setup uses a hardware RAID 5 instead of the OSX software RAID I explained above.