PNY S-Cure Raid3

[nats1956]

PNY SPU5103PPB PCI SATA S-CURE Storage Card RAID 0/1/3 JBODCure anyone use one of these cards in a home media center? What to set-up 5 HDs to increase my media center storage! It states that its a raid 3; but you can hook-up 5 drives?

[unhappy_mage]

Raid 3 will support as many drives as you have ports. That's a 5-port card.

[nats1956]

So whats the difference between raid 3/ 5?

[unhappy_mage]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID#RAID_3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID#RAID_5

[DevilDoc]

I have two cards based on the NetCell "Storage Processing Unit" One is the older ATA style with 5 x 250GB WD's. The other is a model 5103 - Same as the one you refereced - a SATA based with 5 x 320GB WD Renegades.

Both work quite well. The older ATA based card has a minor hiccup every now and again when under a large amount of load. NetCell went incognito a while back. Some say they're dead, some say they're coming back in the near future. I have not heard anything official in either case.

Useful links:

http://www.soft-port.dk/ - unofficial site for official firmware/drivers for the cards.
http://++++++++++++/yd7bnp - link to thread @ maximumPC

[nats1956]

Thanks for the info-newegg has a great deal on these cards and I bought two of them; one has a back-up card! $90 for two AR!

[DevilDoc]

These cards are now only $34.99 @ the egg (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816110002) - a pretty sweet deal if you ask me. I'ma gonna get two - one for array # 2 and the other as a just in case.

[doubleJ]

I just purchased one of these cards from newegg, but it was ~$100. Still, though, it's cheaper than most pci raid5 cards and I couldn't do 1TB with 250's on those. If everything works appropriately, I can have 1TB with 5 250GB drives.
I had 1 250GB full and I added 2 blank 250's. It has been migrating for almost 2 full days, now, and is at 69% complete. It's taking a long time to create the raid, but I'm hoping that everything is solid once it's complete.
JJ

[doubleJ]

3x250 is setup. I ran a test and copied a 1.36gb file to an ata-100 drive from the raid3 and it took 40 seconds (~36mb/sec). Conversely, the same file from the 100 to the raid3 took about 3 minutes. I'm guessing because of creating parity and such.
Ironcially enough, raid3 to a separate sata drive took about 3 minutes. I'm not sure why, though. I've already had a problem drive, since the setup completed, and rebuilding with a new drive worked. It's nice seeing a little green icon in the systray, instead of a red one.
JJ

[doubleJ]

I just purchased one of these cards from newegg, but it was ~$100.
What a jip...
I just looked the card up on newegg again and it's $39.99. I paid $119, but it was saying that a wireless ap was included free. So, I really paid for the wireless, too
JJ