Slowing building an array

[Aku12]

Hey guys, finally got my htpc up and want to slowly build up a rather large file server. I have a few questions.
Background to what i am doing, I have a dvd fetish and buy alot of dvd's on impulse, I only have about 120 dvd's now, but that was all bought in about 10 months. I want to keep full dvd's on my computer (keep special features, subtitles, ect) so i plan to do direct rips.

Firstly, i have never done anything with arrays, is there an array that makes multiple drives into one partition? I would rather have it as one partition as i plan to make a custom program and would like all the information on a single drive so i can sort things through folders.

Secondly, I know with the first thing, wanting a single partition, this is most likely not possible, but is there a way to add drives to the array without reformatting, As i slowly build this array, money is a factor and i plan to start with 2x250 and add new drives when i need the space.

and the last question, I plan to keep the drives in my htpc, untill they no longer fit. At that time i plan to build a seperate file server. But the computer i am using for the htpc (xp 1700+ on an XFX mach4) does not have sata controllers, I dont really want to spend $350 on a raid controller right now since i could use that money to buy 2 more drives, so i plan to buy a couple cheap $20-$40 2 channel sata controllers, is there a way to link these 2 together to get 1 raid out of both cards?
and then in the future, is there a way to combine the $350 raid controller (8 channel) with onboard 4 channel on the mobo i plan to buy to have a 12 drive array (rather a 10 drve, but that would be the same thing).

Thanks
Jesse

 

[unhappy_mage]

Linux with LVM will let you expand across multiple new disks, but it's by no means a good way to start with Linux. Find your local guru and get them to help you with it. I plan to go there... eventually. It will work really well for this use, you can grow partitions across disks easily. No raid-0 losses, but no backup either. You've been warned.

If you've got your htpc in windows and plan to keep it there, get a cheap box (pci-X would be really nice) and go for the file server right away. My $.02

 

[Chaotic Master]

I have just created my file server to store dvd rips also. Using 8 Seagate 7200.7 200GB's in Raid 5. Spanning an array accross multipe cards is a high end feature that you probably wont find in $20-$40 cards. Im using a Broadcom BC4852 card, $300 form newegg, that supports spanning. I hope you have decided on a very good psu.

 

[drizzt81]

you can use windows (which some hacks) to create a software RAID (0/1/5) array across multiple controllers, provided that they play nice together in the same system.

In Linux there is a way to do the same thing (RAID 0/1/5 and I believe even 6), but I do not know how to. someone on SR had a nice post about some of the concerns if you want to do a SW raid in Linux. Linux Software Raid thread on SR