1) Any recommendations out there for cards? I was looking at the Highpoint RocketRaid ones and was fairly impressed. Any major differences between Highpoint, 3Ware, and Promise?
I would stay away from both 3ware and Promise. You might look at Broadcom adapters...they seem to have very good RAID5 write performance, and are at a good pricepoint.
2) This array is going to be attached to a HTPC but I have not decided on the OS I will be using. Anything out there that supports Wintel, OSX, and Linux? Anyone know about RAID compatibilit with Knoppix or Mythpc? 3) Do I have to start with a set of blank drives? Right now 1 of the 3 drives has about 200GB of data on it which would not be easy to backup and get off the drive.
Yes, all drives will be wiped when you init the array. You'll need to get the data off first.
4) Do all the drives in the array have to be of the same size?
No, but the array will be configured around the size of the smallest drive. IE: a RAID5 array of a 40, 120, and 300GB drive would only be 80GB usable (plus 40GB for parity).
Greg
