Well I am using a 6 drive array right now and for the past 6 months. I do have a Broadcom 1820a PCI-X available if you are interested, contact me off list.
If you can wait 2-3 months they will be coming out with raid cards for the PCI-Express slot. My Supermicro board has 2 --- one for the video obviously but the second is currently free. Anyway I have talked to a few people that have played with some pre-production units based upon the PCI-Express slots and they tell me the throughput is unbelievable. In addition to the raid I picked up an Encore ENNHD-NT up to 250GB Network Storage Enclosure from NewEgg. It costs $98 and hooks right up to your network. I also use that to back up really critical stuff. What is nice though, I can use it to move data to any of the other 4 computers on the network - a super share drive if you will, in addition to the data redundancy of having the same files on multiple, independent drives. Best performance on a raid is to use identical drives - same manufacture, model, etc. Though not absolutely necessary, using different sizes would be silly because if you put a 100 gig with 3 250's, you would only the first 100 gig of the 3 larger drives and the rest would be totally unusable to the raid, or dos, or widows. Yes you will lose everything on the drives once you install them on a raid - it not only is a pia to find sufficient sizes to temporarily store everything too, but no matter how you play it, copying 250 gigs is going to take a whole lot of time - but look at it this way - you only have to do it twice, lol. Bob "-----Original Message----- "From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:hardware- "[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brian Weeden "Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2005 11:41 AM "To: hwg "Subject: [H] RAID questions " "Well after my latest HD failure I have decided it is best to pursue a "RAID solution. I have 3 250 GB SATA 150 drives that I would like to "start the array with and will probably be adding a couple more later. " "Right now the array will be going into a Athlon system with a nForce 2 "mobo but soon (< 6 months) I will be moving to a newer 64 bit system "with PCI-X slots. I would like to get a RAID card that supports both "the older 33/66 PCI standard and the new PCI-X. " "I will be booting the OS off a separate, single drive and using the "RAID array for dta storage and media playback. I don't really need a "hardcore, heavy duty server-quality RAID card but I am looking for "something pretty decent. " "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? " "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. " "4) Do all the drives in the array have to be of the same size? " "-- "Brian
