Need a RAID 5 Array

[Aynjell]

And I need help! I'm trying to determine my best course of action, is it safe to setup a nas (running gentoo with virtualbox on top of it, hosting freenas) sharing out from the raid 5 array. it will be on 24/7 except for maintenance reboots and or software update reboots if needed (usually only core system and kernel updates).

Can 1TB Caviar Blacks handle this workload without failing or are they not capable of doing this? (I really don't wanna spring another 180$ for RE versions)

[visbits]

I don't think you will have a drive reliability problem, however I would suggest a hardware raid controller vs onboard or software.

Most affordable controller solution currently is a dell perc 5i. Supports 8 drives in 0 1 5 10 50 raid configurations. They are give or take 80$ depending where you get yours.

[Aynjell]

I don't think you will have a drive reliability problem, however I would suggest a hardware raid controller vs onboard or software.

Most affordable controller solution currently is a dell perc 5i. Supports 8 drives in 0 1 5 10 50 raid configurations. They are give or take 80$ depending where you get yours.

That's very affordable. Mix that with a backplane like I want, plus 2 more blacks and I got a nice setup. I wonder how well perc 5i works with gentoo. I suppose I should be picking this card up on ebay?

Alternatively, I could save money and simply go with linux's built in soft-raid.

[visbits]

You can find the perc 5i on ebay and some other forums, I picked mine up from overclock.net


I'm extremely happy with my hardware raid, It drastically outperforms the software mdadm raid.

If you can afford it hardware raid is the way to go.

Edit: just checked ebay, no good deals at the moment. I got mine for 80$ shipped then I got 2 sets of sas to sata breakout cables for 15$. You will need forced air flow on the controller chip.

http://hostthenpost.org/uploads/c480e2d08d49568a353ea7695e325556.jpg