IDE controller card and Fedora Core 3

[John Summerfield]

On Monday 06 December 2004 11:12, Langdon Stevenson wrote:
> I am attempting to build a file server using a Pentium II 400, for my
> home office.

For software, I recommend you look at Clark Connect - www.clarkconnect.org. 
It's a compilation of Linux software aimed at your needs and contains 
software not included in FC/RHEL.

> I want to build a RAID 5 array for data integrity.  I have four 160Gig
> Western digital hard drives, and a couple of spare IDE controller cards
> that I would like to use.  The controller cards are the issue.

I wonder whether you're going to more trouble than it's worth; a Pentium II 
400 has heaps of power for the typical small office, but it's old and not the 
hardware base I'd expect someone to choose for a high-availability system.

If you really want RAID with lots of disks, I think you should be buying a new 
small SCSI server. Dell, IBM and Sun all have such systems, and in some cases 
with Linux preinstalled.

If you wish to persist with this system, then install one )not two) drive per 
ATA connector, and use skinny cables. With the standard wide cables you are 
going to have ventilation problems.

I have an Abit Hotrood 66 card which uses a Promise HPT chipset; it's old, and 
I had to use a 2.3 kernel when  I first bought it because 2.2 didn't have the 
support.

With your Pentium II, disk performance may be an issue. I find individual 
disks mostly run at twice the speed in my Athlon 1400 that they do in my 
Pentium IIs. I had a couple of drives in a Pentium II running about 23 
Mbytes/sec but I get 40 and up in the Athlon, and the latest drives better 
50.

A drive that gave me 17 Mbytes/sec in a Pentium II on the Hotrod card did 
about 38 on the same card in my Athlon system.

I presume that if you're using 16 Gb drives that throughput is important to 
you.



>
>
> Warning: I am a relative newbie with Linux.  I have built a couple of
> systems over the last year or so, but am by no means an expert.

I recommend you get your experience on something less critical to your 
financia well-being:-) Clark Connect is a pre-packaged software set aimed at 
small offices.

Further, check out the Clark Connect site for lists, join one and ask what 
hardware they recommend, and what people do for backup.

Remember, the most common cause of lost data is deletion by some twit five 
seconds before he realises he's a twit. RAID won't help with that, but simple 
backups will.





-- 

Cheers
John Summerfield
tourist pics: http://environmental.disaster.cds.merseine.nu/