RAID Card Suggestion Needed

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PTNL

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Looking to upgrade a home-use file server's RAID card. It's a desktop Intel board (i865 chipset) with a P4 3.0GHz and an Intel GbE NIC. The current RAID card is a Promise Tech 4 port IDE card (S2000 model, I believe) with 4x300GB parallel ATA drives. Drives are in a RAID-5 array, and are mapped just as storage (operating system is on a separate dedicated drive).

I'm looking to get a new SATA controller card with at least RAID-5 capability. Four SATA drives would be attached, with each drive anywhere in the 1-2 TB capacity (all four would be identical, I just need to check prices first). Operating system would likely be some version of Windows -- either XP Pro or something newer. Linux support would be a plus, but is not a requirement.

The motherboard only has the normal 32-bit PCI sockets available, so any suggestions would have to use that socket type. (Side thought: PCI-X would work, right? But just run not at the card's top speed. Which wouldn't really matter, as this is still home use with at most three people connecting.)
 
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Ah, good call. I'll send a request to move this thread. Thanks!
 
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Most cards are either PCI-X or PCIe, so your choice of board somewhat limits your selection. Also take into account that while PCI-X cards will work in the standard PCI slot, most PCI-X RAID cards are, at least for the average consumer, ungodly expensive. You might be better off changing to a more modern motherboard and cpu (can probably find an LGA775 and p4 for 30-40 bucks off here) and going with a used RAID card like the Dell PERC 5i, which typically costs around $100 and offers huge performance for the price.
 
Did I miss something, like was there a question?

Sounds more like a post of what you are going to do
 
PCI-X RAID5 controllers basically do not exist... which is absurd..so you are stuck with PCI or PCI-E

This card is probably what you need. A low end solution would be going with a PCI Rosewill card, something like this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132013

A higher end solution would be using a RocketRAID card, but since you are only using 4 tiny drives, this is overkill.
 
Wodz said:
PCI-X RAID5 controllers basically do not exist... which is absurd..so you are stuck with PCI or PCI-E
Click to expand...

I have two 3Ware PCI-X cards capable of running RAID5. Only one is, the other is used JBOD. I'll probably put them on Ebay in a few weeks when I upgrade the server.
 
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