raid performance

[kilobyte]

i am not sure if this should be posted here or not. please move if in the wrong area.

ok so here goes notting, i am thinking of building a raid media server to house all my backed up movies i have. (350 dvds witch i own all) so i am thinking of building a raid 5 system using 3 500 gig drives but was wondering if what computer i should turn in to the server. i am trying to build this on the cheap. i have 2 computers

computer 1

amd 3200+
asus mobo
gig ddr ram

computer 2
1.8 c2d
intel mobo
2 gigs ddr2

i am thinking of maybe making computer 1 the server but was not sure if it would beable to hand it. tell me what computer do you think would be my best bet. if i make computer 2 my server would i still beable to get good performance out of it because i use it as a gamming computer right now?

 

[game14]

if its only for storing movies option 1 would be fine , to watch them i would recommend to get a mid performance video card .If u want to rip or edit ur movies option 2 would be better because of the cpu but u still can tranfer them later to ur server for storage.
I ripped movies with a 3200 venice before and it worked fine , just took a little longer.

 

[kilobyte]

kool thanks, i plan on using computer 2 would be doing all the ripping. so computer 1 has enough guts to run a raid 5 system fine? is it over kill for a file server?

 

[Damodred]

Almost. Running a fileserver is possible with a 1ghz computer and 512mb ram. I have, over the years, slowly upgraded the hardware but now stopped cause its fast enough. My 3200+ at 2500mhz is just perfect. The biggest speedimpact on raid5 is not the controller but the amount of disks. The higher amount of disks the higher read/writes you will get. So perhaps you should go with four 400gb disks, they cost about the same as three 500gb disks plus you will get more storage area and more speed. Oh and dont forget backup!