On Sun, May 9, 2004 6:11, Paul said: > > The best cost effective given speed and storage size is promise fast track > tx4 and 250gb sata disks. > Use one or two controllers and have upto 1terrabyte. Then you can stripe, > span or jbod them. > 2.4.26 with 2.4.27-pre1 patch update and libata patch works awesome. we > have > it running on several test boxes. > fast and economical solution. ata is old technology. cost of ata vs sata > isn't much, $20 per controller or disk difference. Then, on Sun, May 9, 2004 6:12, Paul said: > > I've got an adaptec 1200 at home with 4 x 120GB raid5 and I find it slow > and disk access is hampered. > They're all segate 8mb cache drives. The controller has a 128mb ecc ram > chip also. Go for sata And a little later, on Sun, May 9, 2004 6:49, Mark Hahn said: >> I'm putting together a (relatively) large capacity Raid 5 storage >> solution > > large raid with pata is often a cabling nightmare. I wouldn't consider > going larger than 6-8 disks without a custom case (and I'd call 8x250G > pretty small-medium today.) > >> drives. I've been looking into various controller options, both PATA and >> SATA, and have decided that PATA will give me best price/capacity. > > why? I prefer 4-port promise sata controllers ($60). disk prices are > not much different per GB. > >> So far, the most likely candidate (on a cost basis) is the Acard >> AEC6885S >> (http://www.acard.com/eng/product/adapter/pc/ide/aec-6885.html) which is >> a > > ugh, choosing a non-mainstream card is usually a mistake. > >> Finally, does anyone know of any other 4-channel (or 6-channel) ATA >> controllers that would be worth my checking out? > > 3ware is the natural conservative choice Thanks for these replies guys. The reason I was considering the PATA controller was cost - both of the controller and the disks. I have since found the Promise SATA150 TX4 for less than the ACard controller. The SATA version of the Maxtor MaxLine II Plus 250GB drive is £146.88 compared to £134.76 for the PATA version. For a six-disk system, that's a premium of £72.12 for SATA over PATA. I think I'll be going the SATA route. Next job, work out how to install it all - but that's a separate topic! R. -- http://robinbowes.com - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
