- Joined
- Dec 19, 2000
- Location
- Lawrenceville, GA
I got an LSI MegaRAID Elite 1500 for $110 on eBay. It's an U2W dual channel controller and normally is sold with anywhere from 32MB-128MB memory already installed. The drives, so long as they're 18LP and not the 9LP, are plenty fast enough in the 10K RPM versions. I use 6 of them in my setup and push well over 100MBps in RAID 0.
Total cost for me for the controller, extra 128MB of controller cache, two cables and termintors and the 6 drives ran right at $300. That's not that bad considering many are paying that right now for for two decent IDE drives and a cheap controller. You might get more space than the setup I have does, but no way does it beat sub-5ms seek times or go over 120MBps throughput.
If you want even cheaper, go for a bunch of UW SCSI drives and an UW SCSI controller (LSI 1200/1300 series I believe). You can get them in 10K RPM models so seek times are there but they don't have as high an output unless you get several going on at least 2-3 channels (they can be loud too).
Total cost for me for the controller, extra 128MB of controller cache, two cables and termintors and the 6 drives ran right at $300. That's not that bad considering many are paying that right now for for two decent IDE drives and a cheap controller. You might get more space than the setup I have does, but no way does it beat sub-5ms seek times or go over 120MBps throughput.
If you want even cheaper, go for a bunch of UW SCSI drives and an UW SCSI controller (LSI 1200/1300 series I believe). You can get them in 10K RPM models so seek times are there but they don't have as high an output unless you get several going on at least 2-3 channels (they can be loud too).
