I'm looking to setup a file server at home and seeking advice before I buy.

[Robin Laing]

James Wilkinson wrote:
> Paul Crossman wrote:
> 
>>I'm about to reuse some old hardware to create a sizable RAID storage server
>>at home to get all the data I care about in one place and protected. The
>>hardware I'm going to use is an old P3 500MHz system I have which has an
>>A-Bit BE6 motherboard and 256 MB of RAM in it. If I don't have to replace
>>the motherboard that would be great, but if I must, I must.
>>
>>I'm planning on running FC3 or FC4 on this box using two 40GB IDE drives
>>which will be software RAID1.  Also, I will be upgrading the RAM to 512MB.
> 
> 
> OK: I assume that "reliability" is going to be a major factor. (Some
> Abit boards of that age have had capacitor leaks: be warned.) You know
> there'll probably be issues upgrading memory much further.
> 
> Is speed important to you? What sort of network connection are you
> planning on getting?
> 
> If you're limiting yourself to 100 base TX [1], then that's going to be
> your limiting factor. For most data (especially Oggs and the like),
> that's plenty.
> 
> If you're planning on gigabit Ethernet, remember that data is going to
> have to come off the hard drives, through the PCI bus, be encoded, and
> then go back through the same PCI bus to get to the network (given the
> motherboard in question). I'd expect something in the region of
> 40 MByte/s throughput if everything goes well.
> 
> Plain PCI isn't enough for gigabit ethernet speeds when that's the only
> thing on the bus.
> 
> 
>>I'd also like some recommendations on a good SATA RAID controller to use
>>here. I was going to use the 3ware 9500S 8 port controller, but it's PCI64
>>and I don't think the A-Bit motherboard supports that, but if I have to get
>>a new Motherboard, then so be it.  Can someone recommend a good SATA RAID
>>controller that supports RAID 0/1/10/5/JBOD and has full, on the fly, hot
>>swap drive support?
> 
> 
> You should know about http://linux.yyz.us/sata/faq-sata-raid.html , and
> check http://linux.yyz.us/sata/sata-status.html and
> http://linux.yyz.us/sata/software-status.html . The latter says that
> Linux libata does not yet support hot-swap: that rules out a *lot* of
> hardware.
> 
> Otherwise, I would expect the Pentium 3 to be able to handle soft RAID
> as well as this card handles RAID: you might find that using a cheaper
> SATA adapter (or two) and soft RAID does the job as well.
> 
> A PCI64 card *should* work in a 32 bit slot, if there isn't anything
> physically in the way. The "Updated Motherboard compatibility list"
> available from http://3ware.com/support/index.asp lists a lot of (newer)
> motherboards and says to use the 32 bit 33 MHz PCI slots they provide.
> 
> One thing to watch out for: I have found that there are some modern PCI
> cards that won't work in BX motherboards. (A PCI Radeon 9250, for
> example).
> 
> But I have no experience with the 3ware card.
> 
> 
>>I also know that I'm going to need a new power supply to handle 7 disk
>>drives, so I'll be replacing the 200W unit with 400W one. Will this fry my
>>motherboard at all, or does it not matter?
> 
> 
> Shouldn't matter. If it does, then it was time to replace the
> motherboard anyway: its power circuits were dodgy.
> 
> Hope this helps,
> 
> James.
> [1] 100 Mbit/s? Slow?
> 

As I am planning the same thing, I have found that looking at all the 
"good" RAID cards will require a new motherboard that can handle PCI-X 
based adapters which rate as the fastest.  This is an issue for 
multimedia that I want to do.  Of course, if you look around, you can 
purchase hardware to support the RAID card for a reasonable price.

The case is an issue as I want the case to fit within the stereo stand 
and allow the addition of drive in the future.

Review of RAID adapters.
http://www.tweakers.net/reviews/557
Some of the cards come with Linux drivers.

At present I am going to use software raid.

-- 
Robin Laing