From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Christopher Smith Subject: Re: Best way to achieve large, expandable, cheap storage? Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2005 13:19:17 +1000 Message-ID: <4340A335.7070502@nighthawkrad.net> References: <433F63BB.3020008@nighthawkrad.net> <433F8792.6040106@dtbb.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <433F8792.6040106@dtbb.net> Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: Tyler Cc: linux-raid@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-raid.ids Tyler wrote: > What case and power supply(s)are you using? What raid cards are you > using also? The case is a no-name job I picked up from a local PC seller: http://www.pcicase.com.au/sub_files01.htm It's main attraction to me was the large number of 5.25" drive bays. The PSU is just a bog-standard 450W Antec (although since I've recently ugpraded the machine to dual Xeons, I should get a beefier unit). Currently the machine has 2xPromise S150 TX4. Previously, as the 120GB drives were PATA, it also had a Promise TX4000. However, since that card wouldn't work with a 2.6 kernel, I used it as an excuse to get more drives and upgrade to a newer distro :). The TX4s are 32 bit, 66Mhz PCI cards and are in 64/133Mhz PCI-X slots, so they handle four 7200rpm SATA drives each quite well. I toyed with getting a single 8 port SATA card, but all the ones I've seen are full-blown hardware RAID, making them quite expensive and since I use software RAID and have 5 PCI-X slots on the motherboard, not worth it. I'll run out of physical space in the case before I run out of PCI-X slots to drop 4-port cards into. CS