Re: New PC's. Raid 5 Storage Solutions Help Please.

["danward79" <ha@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi

I have been using an adaptec for ver a year, it is excellent, I have
the 8 drive pci card.

I would advise against a motherboard raid array.  I have no experience
of the rocket raid stuff.

My set up is a Coolmaster Stacker in the study, with 8 x 250Gb SATA
drives for the raid 5 array, this stores dvd's, avi's, music (flac
&ape, some mp3's) and pic's.  I have one other 250gb sata drive for my
c: drive.  The whole thing is water cooled.

I seriously love the Coolmaster Stacker case, it has room for two psu's.


--- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, DAVID HARRIS <dh140770@...> wrote:
>
> Ho folks.
>
>   I am in the lucky / unlucky situation that my home PC has gone
kaput, and after replacing the motherboard (54 quid), and finding out
it isn't the motherboard after all I'm considering building a new machine,
>
>   However we are also on the brink of building a HTPC too which i
want to be quiet.
>
>   Here is the plan.
>
>   1. Build HTPC with boot drive and 1 data storage drive (300gb).
This will be enough to cover the day to day PVR requirements.  It will
also ensure that it is pretty quiet as i can use a passive power
supply.  This will be used for Media Centre Edition duties only.
>
>   2. Build new 'Home Office' PC to do the regular stuff, and house
some serious storage as a back end to the HTPC, but also to keep all
our data safe.  I recently suffered a disk failure, and although it
was recoverable, it is a serious pain and you realise how precious
your data is.
>
>   The Home Office presents me with the dilemma.
>
>   I already have 3 x 160gb Parallel ATA disks.  One can be
redeployed as the bootdisk on the HTPC so that will leave 1 bookdisk
for the Office PC, plus a ghosted disk incase the HTPC bootdisk goes
belly up.  (I can live without the office PC for longer).
>
>   I am thinking of a RAID 5 solution as I think it provides the best
price, performance, reliability trade off.  If this is wrong let me
know !!
>   The RAID set will hold video, mp3's, pictures, documents etc
>
>   Trouble is which way to go ???
>   1. Motherboard Raid 5.  Abit and Asus motherboard have this, and
it is the cheapest option, but i don't like the idea of if the
motherboard breaks it is a pain to get data back (or impossible)
>   2. Rocketraid.  The cheapest controllers i have seen.  Are they
any good for a Home Office PC / HTPC server
>   3. Adaptec. Seem to be better but i can't find many reviews.
>   4. All in one box.  Buffalo, Thecus.  More expensive than an 'in
pc' solutions, and they don't seem to have the 'through-put' to
support HTPC.
>
>   Lots of options, but which way to go.
>   The PC;s will be linked via 1gb ethernet.
>
>   Any comments / help very welcome.
>
>   Thanks
>
>   Dave
>
>
>
>
>
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