Need a part list for a WHS with Raid 5

[Deleted member 4644]

I plan to use an old mid-tower case with a 400watt psu (is this too much?) to build a WHS with raid 5 for backup and storage.

1) is the PSU too much/wasteful? It is an enermax high efficiency model ~2 yrs old

2) What cpu/mobo/ram is suggested?

3) What raid card is best, or can I use on-board raid? What are the pros and cons?

I would like total system cost to be under $300 for the cpu/mobo/ram/raid. I already have the drives/psu/case.

4) Do I need a vid card? Why would I want/not want a vid card?

5) Reliability is very important, but not life or death. This will be a quasi-mission critical setup. I will spend more if it will manifestly improve reliability/error correction/etc.


I would like total system cost to be under $300 for the cpu/mobo/ram/raid. I already have the drives/psu/case.

 

[SemperFi]

If you are going to use the current version of whs OS save your money on the RAID card. I haven't heard of anyone successfully setting up RAID on WHS as it wants control of all of your drives. I am not sure if they are going to change that in the next version or not. You can hook up as many drives as you want but whs wants to control them.

 

[RebateMonger]

You can put hardware-based (onboard or add-in card) RAID 5 underneath WHS. It does add complication and reduces disk flexibility and carries the "all-or-nothing" risks associated with storing data on striped disks. WHS is designed for MBR partitions, so the maximum virtual disk size will be 2 TB.

The lowest-power motherboard/CPU combos are atom-based with built-in video. But most of those boards only have a single PCI slot and no built-in RAID chipset. Next come various Celeron chips, again with built-in video on the motherboards.You'd normally expect around 150-Watt power supplies.