Affordable flash backed write cache/RAID controller cards?

[Antoneo]

I am now willing to spend the extra money to get my data protected after the following events:
1. Witnessed my computer crashing with a drive dropping out of my ICH9R "RAID10" array with 4x 1.5TB Seagate 7200.11 SATA drives
2. Noticed incorrect hashes on large files after the array rebuild (the drives themselves passed all diagnostic tests)
3. Neglected to have a backup

It's going to be a long week.

Are there are any reasonably priced flash backed write cache/RAID controller cards? I hope I'm incorrect but it looks like slim pickings out there in general. I know HP offers those for their servers, but it's hard to believe that there are no other competitors in that market.

Since I'm running out of space, I'm planning to use 2TB+ consumer drives in a RAID10 array. Any red flags here?

Thanks!

 

[Emulex]

even if you got a used p410 you would find consumer drives are a no-no.

with pro raid controllers - i only use RE4 2tb drives or sas drives. the raid controllers are not tolerant of non-tler (or equivalent) issues. they will drop them like flies.

only thing i've seen is the qnap/drobo have special drivers to handle the drives themselves. essentially they don't care if its TLER=0 (AV), TLER=8 (TLER RE4,etc) or TLER=infinite (consumer) drives because they ignore everything and just deal with the drives on their own. this does not seem to be open source at all. this is software raid. i have never seen a hardware raid solution (LSI for instance) that will tolerate consumer or AV drives.

ZFS seems like a solution that may cover some of the issues but i do not know enough about it to see if it can deal with consumer drive timeout like the proprietary soft raid solutions.

either way raid does not tolerate:
1. resets/crashes
2. power outages

regardless of technology. it is meant for datacenter grade - separate storage from computing and pray for five 9's.

The zfs guru here might be able to teach us about the tolerance of zfs. i'd love to find a solution that is all hardware.. haven't yet.

 

[Engineer]

Any thoughts on this for $200 shipped?

Looking around the net, seems like a steal of a price for this controller but really not enough information to make me jump (or justify) the purchase. Having never done a RAID but always tempted.......I'm getting the itch to play with something new and exciting, LOL!

Another vendor at $184.xx...

Read a few terrible reviews on the first link posted...not sure on the 2nd one.

 

[Rifter]

If going with consumer drives a Linux software raid will give you the best performance/reliability. Stay away from windows software raid at all costs. The intel chipset raid is not bad for 1 or 0 but i would not run raid 5 on it.

As stated above if going with a pro level controller go with pro level drives.

 

[Emulex]

i have the TS-459? it's an atom with 4 drives - thankfully given to me free (with drives!) good to be in the business. came with 1gb of ram which i had to ditch for 2gb and then disable all services and ntfs and usb/esata. after which it is stable as heck with RE4 drives. crashed like a mofo before i did those tweaks.

kinda costs as much as a pc though lol.