I'm no authority on RAID (or in many respects still learning Linux to begin with!), but from everything I have ever read - Promise RAID controllers and Linux mix like oil and water. Don't do it. "Splurge" and spend a few more dollars for an Adaptec controller.
Agree on the Promise, disagree on the Adaptec. Not that it's bad, just more expensive. 3Ware will be cheaper, is natively supported in the kernel since God-knows-when, works beautifully, and will give you the choice of PATA or SATA drives. Also supports hot-swapping with their very nice RDC-400 cages. For instance, the array I am slowly building:
* 12-drive PATA card about six months ago for $560
* 3 hot-swap cages for $220 each ($660)
* 12 WD-1200JB drives, 120GB w/8MB cache, average $95 each ($1,140)When I'm done, this will give me a hot-swappable RAID-5 array, with a hot-spare drive already in place, with 1.1TB usable real space (i.e. binary terabytes, not decimal) after losing two drives to the hot-spare and parity drives. Total cost of $2,360 yields a unit cost of $2.15/GB. Note that you could save the $660 for the hot-swap cages if this system can tolerate mild downtime, driving your total cost down to $1,700 and your unit cost to $1.55/GB.
Fast, cheap, reliable, hardware RAID. Happiness in a box.
-- Rodolfo J. Paiz rpaiz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.simpaticus.com
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