Ok, put your nerd hats on. Here's a question :
I need some massive data storage. 1 TB or better and it needs to have some recovery mechanism, so RAID0 is out. JBOD might be ok, since data loss would be localized, but you still would loose about 200 GB+ of data if a drive fails and backups would be a bitch, so I don't see that really being an option either. RAID1 would just cost too damn much, so it seems that RAID5 would be the way to go. Now, the question is how to get there? I haven't seen a RAID controller that will do more than 4 drives that runs off standard PCI (4+ are all PCI-X) and I can't find a motherboard that will do it either. So basically that pigeonholes me at 400GB drives. Is there any other way that I'm missing here? I'm either left using an expensive server motherboard with PCI-X, expensive controllers, and cheap discs -or- a cheap motherboard with cheaper controllers/onboard controllers and expensive discs ... correct?
I need some massive data storage. 1 TB or better and it needs to have some recovery mechanism, so RAID0 is out. JBOD might be ok, since data loss would be localized, but you still would loose about 200 GB+ of data if a drive fails and backups would be a bitch, so I don't see that really being an option either. RAID1 would just cost too damn much, so it seems that RAID5 would be the way to go. Now, the question is how to get there? I haven't seen a RAID controller that will do more than 4 drives that runs off standard PCI (4+ are all PCI-X) and I can't find a motherboard that will do it either. So basically that pigeonholes me at 400GB drives. Is there any other way that I'm missing here? I'm either left using an expensive server motherboard with PCI-X, expensive controllers, and cheap discs -or- a cheap motherboard with cheaper controllers/onboard controllers and expensive discs ... correct?
