Storage advice help 1tb array on the cheap

Over 1 year I been thinking and trying to get a 1tb array. This time it is getting really critical that I build one. Can someone guide me to what drives I should get, what storage controller. Cpu, motherboard etc.
I really need the raid security, raid10 raid5. But also need a the cheapest price possible.
Thanks

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=421205

It really depends on what you want to do. Do you want reliablity over speed, speed over reliablity or both (most expensive).

If you need RAID data security then you will need a RAID 5 with at least 3 drives at 500GB each since you lose one drive in RAID 5 to the parity stripe. You'll want SATA for the least expensive solution, but still the controller card will not be cheap if you want it to be reasonably fast. You may also want a hot spare ready to fill in for a failed drive so down time is minimal. Also, you will want to make sure the controller support degraded mode where the RAID will operate with only two drives and the third drive's data being re-built on the fly.

I just finisheded upgrading my server to MASS Storage a few onths ago. I had lot of smaller older drives and they were starting to fail one by one, so i starte replacing them and then got a great deal on three 300GB SATA drives to add to the other 300gb drive I already had. I then got a Promise SATA 4 drives PCI card and loaded it with 256MB cache memory and connect my 4 drives. I now had 900gb of usable storage under RAID 5 plus other drives for storing other data. Overall, my current server has about $1000 invested in it, which is not bad since it has 1.5TB of total storage.

Just check around and I am sure you can find some great deals on cheap drives. Just make sure you get SATA drive at least 3 yr warranties.

$80 for 300GB
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=421411
Figure 6 of those is around $500, much better deal than 400 or 500GB drives.

tom10167 said:

$80 for 300GB
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=421411
Figure 6 of those is around $500, much better deal than 400 or 500GB drives.

Click to expand...

that is not a SATA drive though

And?

It's not hot swap if it's not SATA... that may be an important consideration... however that cost is very hard to beat.

But raid 10 aint that efficent - needs at least 4 drives, RAID 5 is a much better bet IMO, just pick up a controler card some place.

if you just want the storage really cheap and you have an old computer then you could just get a sata controller card and put in as many drives as you can/want and then load an OS on there and make it into a software raid array (which is about the same thing you would get from a cheap raid card).

If you wanted it done right you could pick up a real raid card (you are looking at a good 300-600) however most of the good ones are also pcix (you can run a pcix card in a pci slot however it will run slower) and you don't find those on many non-server boards. If you are willing to wait (like I am) people are starting to make pcie raid cards and once they're a couple out there and motherboards start adding more pcie slots (I am mainly waiting for this and I am not sure if the sli boards really give you two slots or if it would downclock the first pcie slot when you populate the second).

If you still want to go the route of hardware raid I personally like 3ware cards (again this is pcix) and this card is one of the few pcie cards that I know of

Oh yeah forgot to mention the cheapest way to get a 1tb array is raid0 but the cheapest way with security to it is raid5.