Recommendations on good SATA RAID5 card?

[Grasshopper666]

Hey gang, I'm building a file server for about 4 to 8 people to use. I was going to go with 4 SATA drives in a RAID 5 configuration for fault tolerence (their request).

I was just wondering what recommendations there were on an inexpensive but not low quality SATA RAID 5 card.

I will probably be using 4x Raptor or whatever the best SATA drive is at the moment. I haven't looked into it in a couple months so I'm really not sure.

Thanks

 

[imported_Phil]

3Ware Escalade SATA. We use them at work, seem pretty good so far.

 

[sharkeeper]

Four to Eight people? Why not use hostraid R1?

If you MUST use R5 any cheap solution will work. LSi and 3Ware come to mind with Promise right behind. Avoid Highpoint!

Also, the Raptor is not very cost effective give $/GB. A 7200RPM solution is more than adequate IMO.

Cheers!

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: sharkeeper

Also, the Raptor is not very cost effective give $/GB. A 7200RPM solution is more than adequate IMO.

Cheers!

Agreed- the performance increase with four Raptors in RAID-5 versus a decent 8Mb 7200rpm PATA RAID-5 setup will be negligeable.

If they want speed, give them SCSI.

If they want value, give them regular SATA drives.

 

[racolvin]

I just ordered an LSI Logic 150-4 SATA raid controller, so I'll let you know soon

 

[Grasshopper666]

Sorry to sound like a nub, but what is hostraid R1? are you talking about RAID-1 configuration or something else?

Thanks for the info on the Raptors, that will save a chunk of change. Cost performance and fault tolerance are what they are after so I chose SATA drives and RAID 5 (3+1 hot spare).

 

[sharkeeper]

Hostraid R1 is a pair of SATA drives on the mainboard controller mirrored. It's cheap and very adequate for a small server.

Cheers!