SATA RAID5 controller card suggestions

[armatage]

I'm after a RAID5 SATA card for my server at home that can be managed from within windows Small Business Server 2003R2. My current one is a cheap one and causing me problems as i can only make arrays in increments of 1TB and my 4x 500GB (SATA)HDD's will make a 1.38TB array. A 4 port card is a minimum but 8 ports would be nice. Also needs to be SATA but not fussed over SATA 1 or 2.

Cheers

 

[R4z0r]

Search. There's an excellent thread about this which is pretty recent.

 

[Pandobear]

why not use the card that you have in sata mode, rather than raid, or if it does not support that create a seperate array for each drive, then use Windows own RAID 5 support that is build into Server 2003? Or buy one of the four port adaptec cards available at OcUK, add four more drives, then use the Windows RAID 5 function, you can then have whatever array size you like. I have a 7.5TB array built this way using two 8 port sata cards (circa £60 each) and 12 x 750GB drives running using Server 2008. All works perfectly, and is transferable to any other Windows Server machine. I am unsure of the exact speed, but it is definately 100 Mb/sec plus. All of the hardware raid cards will cost you £150 plus for eight ports. Silicon image 3114 four port card, around £15, or nice adaptec one £65 at OcUK.