I can't speak to what's available third party, but I would advise that "fault tolerance" (RAID, in most cases) is not backup. In addition, software-based RAID solutions have long been considered t obe insufficient in performance. Up to a few years ago, it has been thought of as being so bad that it wasn't even worth making the software to do it easily available.
This has changed more recently and Windows 8/2012 and Solaris/FreeBSD have slightly more flexible versions of this idea built in, complete with the ability to randomly add or remove disks or change redundancy levels, something many hardware RAID solutions make not-easy. (Or make you leave the OS to do, if you don't have the management tools or you're booted from a RAID volume.)
Part of this is that server CPU horsepower has gone up a lot in the past few years, and part of it is that a lot of groups now have dedicated storage servers, which serve volumes up via iSCSI to the actual application and infrastructure servers that are using that capacity. (file/mail/database/web etc.)
In terms of the physical arrangement: I wouldn't bother with pulling backplanes out of other servers. I'd either cable the disks up manually inside a standalone scsi tower, or I'd buy a specific disk shelf.
Unfortunately, even if the software does exist, and your disks are "fast," you may not get very good performance out of it. RAID controllers you can buy today often have PowerPC-like or similar RISC chips on them which can perform the necessary calculations for RAID faster than any Power Macintosh G4 could ever hope to do. And, they have the benefit of not also needing to run Final Cut, Photoshop, or even Word at the same time.
The following is the part of my post which is "not fun."
But also, if this is an OS 9 system with USB, then I honestly recommend the "keep it simple" method. I literally own five of these and they've all been perfect, and it was much more cost-effective than the tape drive I wanted to get.
If you want firewire: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236542
Firewire, 2TB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236543
Okay, fun again:
Do you have a copy of Retrospect for Mac OS 9? Have you considered looking into the cost of a used DAT72 or DAT160 mechanism? They can connect via USB as well as SCSI and SAS/SATA and they fit natively 36 and 80 gigs on a cartridge, respectively. In addition, for those gigs, although they'll take a painfully long time to write out, you won't need to be present at the computer. It's potentially a very huge win if you have less than a hundred or so gigs of stuff, are willing to take a chance on some used equipment (because new pricing on DAT equipment, which does still exist, is insane) and you'll be able to be that guy who does tape backups.
This has changed more recently and Windows 8/2012 and Solaris/FreeBSD have slightly more flexible versions of this idea built in, complete with the ability to randomly add or remove disks or change redundancy levels, something many hardware RAID solutions make not-easy. (Or make you leave the OS to do, if you don't have the management tools or you're booted from a RAID volume.)
Part of this is that server CPU horsepower has gone up a lot in the past few years, and part of it is that a lot of groups now have dedicated storage servers, which serve volumes up via iSCSI to the actual application and infrastructure servers that are using that capacity. (file/mail/database/web etc.)
In terms of the physical arrangement: I wouldn't bother with pulling backplanes out of other servers. I'd either cable the disks up manually inside a standalone scsi tower, or I'd buy a specific disk shelf.
Unfortunately, even if the software does exist, and your disks are "fast," you may not get very good performance out of it. RAID controllers you can buy today often have PowerPC-like or similar RISC chips on them which can perform the necessary calculations for RAID faster than any Power Macintosh G4 could ever hope to do. And, they have the benefit of not also needing to run Final Cut, Photoshop, or even Word at the same time.
The following is the part of my post which is "not fun."
But also, if this is an OS 9 system with USB, then I honestly recommend the "keep it simple" method. I literally own five of these and they've all been perfect, and it was much more cost-effective than the tape drive I wanted to get.
If you want firewire: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236542
Firewire, 2TB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236543
Okay, fun again:
Do you have a copy of Retrospect for Mac OS 9? Have you considered looking into the cost of a used DAT72 or DAT160 mechanism? They can connect via USB as well as SCSI and SAS/SATA and they fit natively 36 and 80 gigs on a cartridge, respectively. In addition, for those gigs, although they'll take a painfully long time to write out, you won't need to be present at the computer. It's potentially a very huge win if you have less than a hundred or so gigs of stuff, are willing to take a chance on some used equipment (because new pricing on DAT equipment, which does still exist, is insane) and you'll be able to be that guy who does tape backups.