I think I have done a bonehead move. I had two 400GB hard drives (IDE) and one 750GB hard drive (also IDE). I decided I wanted to take my old AMD 3200+ box and turn it into a simple mirrored storage box. So, I bought two more 750GB IDE drives and (I still need to get one more). The plan is to put all four 750GB drives on a RAID controller and mirror each pair. Then, I was either going to get a second card and mirror the two 400's or just put them on separate onboard IDE ports and do a software mirror (the O/S is Win2003 Server). The boot drive is a 250GB drive.
What PCI cards actually support 750GB IDE hard drives? Should I just get a good IDE controller do everything via the software? I'd prefer not to have proprietary formats also. Basic NTFS seems find to me.
I am not looking for super performance although that would be nice. I'm looking for reliable longer term storage that I don't have to back up to another location. I have a lot of music ripped (over 5,000 albums with another 1000 left to rip), all my family pictures, home movies, etc. I have already gone through one devastating loss of movies of people (now deceased) of which I was unable to recover all of the data and I do not want to go through that again. I also will be running backups from my PC's to this box on a nightly basis.
Opinions? Advice? Help?
What PCI cards actually support 750GB IDE hard drives? Should I just get a good IDE controller do everything via the software? I'd prefer not to have proprietary formats also. Basic NTFS seems find to me.
I am not looking for super performance although that would be nice. I'm looking for reliable longer term storage that I don't have to back up to another location. I have a lot of music ripped (over 5,000 albums with another 1000 left to rip), all my family pictures, home movies, etc. I have already gone through one devastating loss of movies of people (now deceased) of which I was unable to recover all of the data and I do not want to go through that again. I also will be running backups from my PC's to this box on a nightly basis.
Opinions? Advice? Help?