RAID suggestions

[zkissane]

I'm thinking about moving to a RAID setup to complement my new Opteron 165. Here are my self-made rules:

 

1) I'm not interested in striping without redundancy. This means RAID 0+1 (or is it 10; I can't ever remember, anyway, not important now) or RAID 5 (which I'm not leaning toward).

 

2) I need a significant gain in real storage space over my current configuration before I'll consider it. "Significant" >= 50GB.

 

3) Heat and space are no object; look at my case. The hard drives live in a chamber behind all the important stuff, and have 2 of their very own 120mm fans.

 

4) If I have to upgrade my P/S, then it has to happen, I guess.

 

5) I don't have a strict dollar budget per se. But, if Choice A is top of the line and super expensive, and Choice B gives, say, 90% of the performace for 50% of the price of Choice A, I'm probably going to go with Choice B.

 

6) (Perhaps a derivation from #5) SATA only need apply. Unless there's a remarkably compelling reason to get a RAID card, I'm going to stick with the onboard NF4 RAID controller.

 

7) I'm not a drive brand bigot as long as we stay in the Big 4 (WD, Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi). I've used many WDs, Seagates and Maxtors over the years.

 

I've seen the $50 Hitachi drives, but they can't satisfy both #1 and #2. I also know about the Raptor line, but I'm not sure that they fit in with #5.

 

This drive has caught my eye: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?...N82E16822136010 ; 4 of these in 0+1 (or 10) ought to give me 500GB of real storage, right? Does anybody have any other suggestions?

[CPDMF]

RAID5 won't happen on the Ultra-D so count that out unless you want to run a PCI or PCI-E controller.

 

I also don't feel the real need for redundancy on an overclock/gaming machine, but that's just me, I choose to use one touch external for storage and a burned image for reinstalls as I push my rigs pretty hard and data corruption will happen long before a hard drive fails and RAID 1 or 5 won't make a difference to me.

 

When dealing with large amounts of data I prefer to stick with WD or Seagate drives, the ones you have chosen would be at the top of my list.