Need help with choice of RAID controller

To start this, I decided to built a fileserver for storing all my stuff. I don't want to upgrade my main rig's harddrives all the time, so I just got myself a huge case with space for many drives. I also want reliability, so I'm going for a RAID1 array at least.

I'm very new to all of this, and I have no idea what raid controllers to look at. The system I'm using is a MSI mobo with VIA KT266 chipset, XP 2400+ and 768MB of PC2100. It has regular PCI slots.

What I want to start with is something reliable, about 4 SATA ports, support for RAID1 and affordable. And a bit fast doesnt hurt as well. Are there cheap controllers with 8 ports?

And what about when in the future, I have two RAID1 arrays on the controller (or maybe if it supports a RAID that uses four drives while allowing one to fail without losing data), can I then just add another controller or won't my PCI bus like that?

I want to spend about $150 max on the raid controller. Hope I can get something for that money

The cheapest 8-port RAID cards are probably going to be Promise or Highpoint. You're still looking at over $150 (although not by much in a couple of the Promise cards). However, you're not really gaining anything over an embedded RAID solution other than the extra ports as their still not true hardware cards. For a true hardware RAID card with 8-ports, expect in the upwards of $300.

True hardware 4-port cards are going to cost about as much - $200+ range.

As far as adding two RAID cards, I'm too sure about how it is now, but from what I recall it's never a sure thing. Normally the BIOS of one will overtake the other, not allowing you to access the card at all. It may be possible using cards with different chipsets, but I won't dare to say it's a certainty.

If you're just looking for redundant storage capability, I see no reason not to find a board or PCI card that has a controller with RAID5 capability and only 4-ports. With the hard drive capacities available now, you really don't need more than 4 unless you're backing up an entire DVD collection or something. Going RAID5 with four 250GB hard drives gives 750GB of unformatted space. If any drive fails, just replace it with another of the same and rebuild the array. This can be done with down to three drives, so you have some room.

One idea, if you want to go REALLLLY cheap, is to purchase some NON-RAID add-in cards for that machine and throw Win2k or WinXPpro on it and use software RAID1. Granted, dont expect this solution to blow the doors off the competition (AKA dedicated hardware RAID controllers) but if you are simply looking for cheap storage alternatives and you already have a computer simply for storage, then this would be a viable option. This solution would still be fast enough to act as a dedicated file server even over a solid Gigabit network link.

ok thanks for the replys. I like the thing Jon said about getting a 4 port controller that supports RAID5. I'm gonna look into that first.

Check out this thread as well: http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=410925

I'm currently looking at the LSI Logic MegaRAID SATA 150-4 64-bit PCI SATA Controller Card. I have some questions that I can't find answers to on the LSI Logic site.

1. Does this card support 33mhz PCI, because they only mention 66mhz on the website.

2. Does this card support the new high capacity drives, like the 400gb. And would a RAID5 array with 4 x 400gb (1200gb space) drives be possible?

3. What exactly does the backup battery do, and is it necesarry? I read it would speed things up but how does this work?

I can only answer one, possibly two of those questions.

I can think of no reason why it would not operate in a 33MHz slot as most 66/64 cards I've dealt with usually have a jumper or work by autodetecting the bus it's on. I would email LSI support to make absolutely certain since anything is possible.

The battery backup can be described as sort of UPS for the controllers onboard cache. In the event of a power outage, brownout, etc. the card may opt to switch to batter power to regulate the power to the volatile memory. This helps in reducing data corruption or loss. During a power outage, the BB unit can normally retain what's in its cache for 24-72 hours, depending on the battery capacity. It doesn't speed anything up, but is normally a good option to implement with hardware controllers.