Best Sata Raid 5 Card With 4 Or More Ports

gargoyle67 · 16 Dec 2008 at 14:55

Hi, What's the best pci\pci-e sata card for about £100, Has to be able to do raid 5 as I need redundancy, It's for a htpc i.e big media files, I would like 4 or more ports as at the moment I'm running 6 1tb samsung spinpoint drives.
Another question is if I buy a 4 port card can I add another card for the other drives ? My case will hold about 8 to 10 HD at a push, But the problem is I only have 1x pci-e slot of course :rolleyes:

Thanks.

rpstewart · 16 Dec 2008 at 15:20

You only have 1 PCIe slot or you only have a single 1x PCIe slot? The latter is going to be tricky because most decent 4 port RAID cards are PCIe 4x cards.

gargoyle67 · 16 Dec 2008 at 15:38

Sorry, I only have one pci-e slot
EDIT** Just looked in my manual and it's only 1x too, Looks like I might need a new mob as well then ho hum.

rpstewart · 16 Dec 2008 at 15:50

You can get 4 port PCIe 1x cards but they tend to be RAID0/1 only.

Have you thought about Windows Home Server rather than RAID5?

gargoyle67 · 16 Dec 2008 at 16:48

Thanks for your input rpstewart, what are the benefits of windows home server over raid 5 I need it to be compatible with my meedios front end also, I'm currently running WinXP Pro.