RAID for under £50

[L337 M33P]

I'm a cheapskate and would like a nice IDE RAID array to go with my new motherboard. I have found out that PCI RAID controllers and old Hard Disk Drives are extremely cheap on Ebay, so I am willing to buy a bundle of disks that someone is selling off.

Are there any provisos to buying HDs off Ebay? I know that most aren't guaranteed to work but because they are soooo cheap I am willing to give it a shot.

Will dissimilar drives work in RAID? Either 0 or 1 or 0+1 because that is all the PCI controllers that are being offered will do.

[Xaotic]

Dissimilar drives will work, unless there is a really bad conflict in behavior. You will be limited to the performance of the slower drive. I'd rather know who and from where I'm getting the drives. You could try putting a WTB in the classifieds. Maybe someone is upgrading.

[L337 M33P]

OK, bought a "4-channel" ATA RAID controller off Ebay for £17, and got a 7200RPM 20Gb WD drive for £37 and another that will probably go for £35. Neither the RAID card or the 1st HD has arrived yet :mad:

More like RAID for £80 :S

[XWRed1]

Should have just done software raid.

[L337 M33P]

With one drive ? :p

's all I got at the moment. The guy said he posted the stuff last night so all should be dandy in a couple of days :cool:

Plus I want the option of being able to physically move the array around once in a while and setting up software RAID each time on each machine isn't going to be fun. With a card all that is needed are the drivers on the machine.

[Xaotic]

Sounds like you're all set. The portability of the array is a great reason to get a card. Have fun with it, but remember to back up the data.

[L337 M33P]

Wheee got it today - nice and dandy but...

Is there a potential problem with the controller sharing IRQ11 with my network adapter?

Also, I nearly can't hear this W200EB drive - nearly silent :)

Edit
Arr dammit - only getting 13MB/s in ATTO - something's wrong

The drive is using Cable select setting, on channel 1 of the controller. How do I enable UDMA for this drive?

[Xaotic]

How is the jumper set? It should run as master with either pins 5-3 or 6-4 or no jumper at all. Here's the link on the drive:

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_sid=aVRaiZVg&p_lva=&p_faqid=720&p_created=1037287096&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9ncmlkc29ydD0mcF9yb3dfY250PTEmc F9zZWFyY2hfdGV4dD13ZDIwMEVCJnBfc2VhcmNoX3R5cGU9NCZ wX3Byb2RfbHZsMT1_YW55fiZwX3Byb2RfbHZsMj1_YW55fiZwX 2NhdF9sdmwxPTgyJnBfc29ydF9ieT1kZmx0JnBfcGFnZT0x&p_li=

Have you installed the latest BIOS and driver for the controller? They need to match revisions for best performance.

[L337 M33P]

ok, time to do some updating of Bioses.

I will change the jumper too :)

EDIT

Updated drivers to proper ones, disk read and write now at about 23 MB/s