Building SATA RAID Storage...

[fatguy]

Ok, I have recently come into a need for tons and tons of redudant storage. Right off the bat I'm thinging 4 SATA Drives in RAID-5. Does anyone have an opinion on this controller card?

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=16-115-015&depa=0

I think I'm gonna go with 4x160GB drives. The Seagates look decent, always been a WD guy myself...

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=22-148-034&catalog=23&manufactory=BROWSE

TIA...

[Steven4563]

controller card looks good but coz im a maxtor drive fan id go with 4x200gig maxtor Sata drives :) but otherwise by all means get the seagate drives never liked them myself

[Terminat.]

controller card looks good but coz im a maxtor drive fan id go with 4x200gig maxtor Sata drives but otherwise by all means get the seagate drives never liked them myself

I agree. I have a Maxtor Diamondmax 10 SATA 200GB drive and it is astonishingly fast. In fact, many reviews say its performance is nearly equal to that of a Western Digital Raptor:

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=diamondmax10&page=1&cookie%5Ftest=1

http://www.bestpricecomputers.co.uk/reviews/NCQ/

These drives also support SATA300 (SATA-II) with NCQ and other advanced features.

Even better: they're cheaper than those Seagates you picked out:

http://www.dealtime.com/xPO-Maxtor_DiamondMax_10_Hard_drive_160_GB_internal_3_ 5_SATA_150_7_pin_Serial_ATA_7200

[fatguy]

Ok those drives look nice. I was really going after seagate's 5 yr warrenty, but 3 yrs is ok I suppose...

I'm looking for a case to hold this disk array... hows this one look to you guys?

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=11-123-076&catalog=23&manufactory=BROWSE

[Steven4563]

looks good to me

are u building a storage server ? or is your comp in sig going in there too or just the drives ?

[fatguy]

yeah...this drive array is going to be used for a lot of different media storage solutions across my local network. DVR, MP3, AVI, etc. I'd love to get a machine setup for just storage...and since I don't like to keep my primary machine on 24x7, it seems to make sense.

[el]

make sure the card does sataII and get SataII drives. My 2cents.

[fatguy]

What difference am I going to notice by going PCI-X over PCI?

[JCLW]

Your network speed will be the limiting factor, so PCI-X won't get you any farther ahead. Not unless you spend some big bucks.

See my posts in this thread - I just built a very similar setup: http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=362547

[fatguy]

thanks, nice thread!