non-raid SATA controllers?

[beaster]

I am doing a rebuild of my file server with larger SATA drives. I plan to have 5 data drives with 5 mirror/backup drives. I'm looking at SATA controller cards and basically it looks like I need 3 4-port PCI SATA II cards (I don't see 5 port cards.) Or I presume I could do 1 8-port and 1 2-port. I have no SATA ports on the mobo.

Since I don't need RAID, I was thinking I could get some cheaper cards. I don't see much in the way of "cheap" on newegg...can anyone point me in the right direction?

Good linux support is a must, btw.

 

[Paendrag]

I don't mean to pester you on your choice not to go with RAID, but might I ask why you are choosing to use 5 mirror/backup drives instead of using RAID5 or 6? I'm just wondering if I am overlooking some advantage that setup might have over RAID.

 

[beaster]

I don't mean to pester you on your choice not to go with RAID, but might I ask why you are choosing to use 5 mirror/backup drives instead of using RAID5 or 6? I'm just wondering if I am overlooking some advantage that setup might have over RAID.

That's a fair question. To be honest I think it's a comfort level. I'm not sure I want the drives dependent on one another as part of an array -- as I understand it, if more than one drive goes in a RAID 5 array, you'll lose some data.

What's nice about my current solution is that I have a cron job mirroring the drives' contents once nightly. It also sets up incrementals. So if I happen to goof and delete something by mistake, I can usually go back and get it a number of days after the fact.

 

[khaoohs]

I'm looking for the same thing for the same reason. I can't seem to find any 4 port or greater SATA cards that are NOT RAID cards. I would like an 8 port SATA card with no RAID functionality. Doing drive mirroring in software at the host level (FreeBSD) as I have had two drives fail on me in a raid5 array.

beaster: what are you using to do drive mirroring with incrementals? I have been thinking about setting up something similar.