Reliability vs Cost of SATA and SCSI RAID servers

[BlueHeelers]

We currently have a Dell PowerEdge 600SC and are in the process of upgrading our storage solutions. My current server has 33 and 66 Mhz PCI slots but no PCI-X slot. Most of the high quality RAID cards seem to require PCI-X (understandably for the performance).

The server is used in a small office of up to 5 users. Primary purposes are file sharing (we have several Access and MS SQL databases that we are in ALL day), web serving, and storing lots of data (business documents, spreadsheets, graphic designs, etc). In terms of storage capacity, we have around 20GB of data.

I am trying to figure out if I should plan to:

1) Buy a new server (Dell PowerEdge 1800 for ~$1200 now with current promos) and buy a U320 PCI-X SCSI RAID Card for around $200 and a few SCSI U320 10,000 RPM HD's for around $180 each. This is around ~$1800 total

2) Buy a new server (Dell PowerEdge 1800 and buy a PCI-X SATA RAID Card for around $200 and a few 36 GB SATA WD Raptor's 10,000 RPM HD's for around $120 each. This is around ~$1650 total

3) Keep the existing server, buy a Promise SATA PCI Controller and put in a few 36 GB SATA WD Raptor's. This around $440.

4) Any other ideas or recommendations of cards or drives?

I don't want to convert a cheap desktop into a server as reliability and uptime are extremely important. Also, I want to be able to recover from a disaster within minutes if a drive or other piece of hardware were to go out. I am not concerned so much about storage space so I will probably go with RAID 1 for the data drives and probably a single drive (or maybe another RAID 1) for the system drive.

Thanks

Edit: Fixed SATA link

 

[imported_Kensai]

What're the specs of the existing server?

 

[mechBgon]

Backup means backup, not fault tolerance. You want a fault-tolerant disk setup, sure, but you also need a tape-backup system or the equivalent (bunch of USB drives would work) and you need to schedule those backup jobs and plug your tapes or drives so they can happen. Keep at least some of the media (tapes/drives) off-site in a safe-deposit box or somewhere safe, in case the building burns down, the pipes burst, someone burgles the whole server, extreme lightning strike, whatever.

In terms of tape, look at a ~80GB DLT drive maybe?

 

[DaveSimmons]

What mechBgon said.

My previous employer had a break-in where equipment was stolen and damaged, RAID 1 won't save you from anything except drive failure.

 

[BlueHeelers]

Answers to questions

Kensai - Pentium 4 2.4GHz, 1GB RAM SCSI U160 Non-Raid card

mechBgon - We make backups to DVDs weekly. I am thinking about buying a network hard drive and scheduling all the computers to copy their changed files (hopefully by using the Windows file Archive attribute)

Thanks!