Anyone tried an 8 bay minisas HD + thunderbolt pcie encl+ rocketraid 2722 pcie as a thunderbolt HD?

I'm setting up a new FCP X workstation using a new MPB, missing a large + fast storage array for video.

I'm trying to figure out if this will work,

8 bay storage array + PCie card
San Digital TR8X+P

I looked up the pcie card and it is thunderbolt aware.

and this, a thunderbolt pcie enclosure
eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/PCIe...ssis/Mercury_Helios/

IF this works I figure it will cost $2,200 for 24TB.

The biggest problem may be how the system works if I put the computer to sleep.

If you're wanting to continue processes thru the night, then you'll probably want to only put the display to sleep. You can control that along with CPU functionality even after extended periods of inactivity inside Energy Saver in your System Preferences. I usually turn the display & keyboard illumination off, but leave the processor going if it's doing rendering or some other lengthy task.

The additional drive question I'm curious about, perhaps someone can illuminate me on why my external hard drive will fire up every few minutes when I'm not accessing anything on it, using a program that is completely unconnected to any of the media on the drive? This mystery is rather irritating.

I guess the chance of me putting the mac to sleep with the drive connected are slim anyway, I'm surprised someone hasn't built an all in one 8bay thunderbolt array.

I was trying to figure out if there was a PCIe card that was internal mini sas and thunderbolt aware, none yet, if there was I could easily build an all in one myself.

I'm intrigued by what you are attempting to build, but the web links to new egg were broken.

How does it work? Thunderbolt mac into the Helios, and then out of the Helios via thunderbolt into...what? Sorry if I'm not getting it...

I removed the link to new egg, it's the Sans Digital TR8X+P, which is an 8bay HD drive array with mini-sas connection and comes with a PCIe card with mini-sas connection, this should give you 750MB/Sec- read/write in a RAID5 setup. You can buy a more expensive card which for the Helios which may give you even faster speed. I figure with 8 - 3TB($1200) drives the TR8X+P($650) and the Helios($380) that's about $2300 for 24TB. The Promise Pegasus is $3000 for 18TB.

Sounds great--if it all works

So: thunderbolt out of the mac into the Helios. And then --what out of the Helios into the 8 bay Raid?

Thanks.

2 minisas cables from the Helios to the RAID drive which carries 8 x SATAiii bandwidth. This also means that you could have two RAID5 Partitions setup in RAID0 so that you could lose 1 drive out of each partition and still be okay.