easys pace upgrade options?

[paradoxblue]

so im presently selling all my older drives which WERE

3x80 sata
3x250 ide
1x300 ide
1x120 sata

and using a single 80 right now for my os which will be replaced.
i refuse to use any ide drives here out. each chan will have its own dvd burner soon.

i plan to buy the new WD 500gig sata drives that are silent.
and raid them i want some backup ability but im lost.

if i buy one now and stick it in can i start using it and when i buy a second simply add her into the raid. then when i get a 3rd use it for more backup like. and continue to add drives till i have 8 of them?

I'm planning to have ALL the drives be the same model/brand/size

which controller card would work best. which methode. and what should i do for an OS drive?
get twos maller faster's.. one raptor?

help!! thanks

 

[drizzt81]

before I say anything else, let me get the standard stuff out of the way:

RAID-N is not backup.

ok, now that we have this figured out:
Depending on which controller you have, you may be able to do online-capacity expansion (OCE) and online-raid-level migration (OLM). If you start with a single drive, you could then move to either to RAID-1 with two drives and then to RAID-5 when you get a third drive. however, there is a non-zero probability of your array going down each time that you are performing this action. In particular, I would not do this, unless you had a UPS and some backups, just in case.

Controller: depends a lot on the interface you want, for PCIe I'd suggest the Highpoint 23x0 or the Area 12xx line. Your budget has a major impact on this choice.

A separate OS drive is a very smart choice. Depending on whether this machine would be a Fileserver only or whether you are going to use it as a workstation, I would chose different drives for the OS.

 

[paradoxblue]

i need regular pci card for it.

its goignt o be on a NAS eventually so i guess ill get a raptor or two for my os

and yes i have multiple UPS

 

[unhappy_mage]

If you could maybe update your motherboard first so that you have pci-e capability, that would probably futureproof this card a lot. I envision pci going the way of isa fairly soon, and pci-e will be a little more stable. The card will likely cost more than the new board, as well; as long as you're upgrading you might as well go whole hog.