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Thanks, I'd really like to accept that. I have however heard some conflicting reports - people complaining about noise and particularly speed. But given the ease and the power managment I agree it's worth considering.

Just thought I'd add my experience.

I built a NAS box about a month ago using SATA drives and a new Asus motherboard - can't remember the model number but the one with both Intel RAID5 and Silicon Image SATA controllers on. 4 RAID drives on the Intel controller and 1 plain drive on the SI.

Fedora Core crashed after asking for the keyboard layout. Knoppix wouldn't recognise either of the controllers. Maybe another distro would have worked, but at 2am after a full day you give up trying.

In the end I gave in and put Windows XP on. Worked fine.

According to the manufacturer’s website http://www.norcotek.com/DS-1220.php, it supports ‘RAID 0, 1, 5, 0+1, JBOD’. I can’t wait to try it out when I get the unit in.

Noise->Compared to the Antec 350W case with the 5 250 5400RPM drives and Pentium 4 chip RAID system I had, the ReadyNAS NV is easily 3xs as quiet. Plus, it generates less heat. And uses less electricity.

Speed->Copying and accessing files is about the same as the above system. I'm hoping to upgrade the 256Megs of Ram to 1 Gigabyte to improve performance. A number of other users have done this and they report huge speedups.

That makes sense since it seems the hardware is what restricts the efficiency of the system. Are the Infrant units easy to upgrade or do you need to order some special RAM? Any chance of upgrading the processor as well?

Bah! Ready NAS is still slower than my very quiet low heat PIII rig Passive heat sink on the CPU and 120mm low noise fans in the PSU and on one the case. There is enough room for 11 drives provided I use enough adapters for 5.25" to 3.5" drives I can load it up.

Kind of a bad news update. Setting up a cheap DIY RAID 5 system using hardware RAID, is actually rather impractical unless you can find an old PCI IDE RAID card.

The probelm is that old/low end motherboards have 32-bit PCI or PCI-Express slots.
Most of the hardware RAID cards (exlude software or fakeraid cards) come in PCI-X, PCI-E x4 or x8 format.

PCI-X is only on expensive mobo's for servers/workstations. PCI-E x4 or x8 is also prety rare.

Some SLI motherboards will allow you to stick those cards in the SLI slot, but its mostly a plug and pray deal since it depends on each vendor's bios implementation.

PCI RAID cards aren't made anymore, so eBay is your best bet. I found LSI MegaRaid's for $180. If you're outside the US, its even tougher to find one. Other hardare RAID cards will be more expensive. :x

This also means that you're restricted to IDE HDD's which some may not like in terms of future re-usability. IDE disks are also more expensive than SATA at high densities (weird).

So between having to buy a new case to accomodate 5 disks, tracking down a PCI RAID card and buying IDE HDD's, I've lost much enthusiasm

Combine it with setting up the software, and those Infrant ReadyNAS boxes are looking better and better. :?

Dimitrik did you know that PCI-X cards are generaly backwards compatable, one will fit into 32bit 33MHz PCI slots but it will be limited to the standard PCI bus speed...133MBs. A single HD won't normaly reach even half of that speed. and yes your can still find PCI hardware based I/O raid cards.

PCI:
32bit x 33Mhz
PCI-X:
32bit x 33Mhz
32bit x 66Mhz
64bit x 33Mhz
64bit x 66Mhz
64bit x 100Mhz
64bit x 133Mhz
PCI-X 2.0 - includes 266 MHz and 533 MHz speeds as well.

Thanks, you're rightbut unfortunately this doesn't really solve the problem.

None of the current hardware RAID cards (below $600) happen to be backwards compatible. Many fakeraid/software RAID cards are, but they're not a very good idea if data integrity is important to you.

An while you can still find old PCI RAID cards on eBay, but that brings up another problem: What happens to your array if your card dies?

You might not find the same card and no other products will be compatible with your array. If you start with a new product and it dies the chances of finding another one, even 2nd hand, are much better.

I'm not knocking the ideas here, I'm just bringing up some key questions that need to be considered by anyone attempting this: What are you using the NAS for? How precious is the data? What kind of kit do you have access to? And of course, what's your budget?

Long term, I plan to build a proper fileserver, following Bill's example but short term one of the ready boxes seems more convenient.

Highpoint Rocket RAID 1640 and 1810 are both capable PCI RAID controllers, it may saturate the bus, but only by maybe 10-20MB, not a huge loss for this kind of implimentation.

I have a 1640 running RAID1 with 2 250GB drives for an email server, works great.

My other 2320 RAID controller is a PCI-e 4x, just get an Asus board, lots of them have 4x slots.

The 2320 offloads XOR, though it doesn't have onboard cache, the 1640 is a non-accelerated version. The 1810 I believe will also offload, not sure though.

You don't need cache for smaller arrays. I only use cached controllers for my Terminal Servers, near-line storage servers, and large email servers. All of which are SCSI of course and use PCI-X cards. The typical home user geek doesn't need that kind of equipment for a home theater storage system

Really it isn't that much to build a high quality NAS even with PCI-X using older new and or even refurb'd gear. If you are looking for big, fast and cheap, check this out, all new, although not the newest gear but it would make a kick butt box.

2 - PIII 1GHz 133MHz FSB 256K FCPGA Socket 370 CPU RETAIL BOX - Warranty: 3 Years Intel Manufacturer Warranty
Price: $30.00 each

1 or more - 512MB PC133 ECC Registered SDRAM 168-PIN DIMM 64X72-75 - Major Brand: Micron/ Samsung/ Hitachi/ Infineon/ Hyundai
Price: $43.00 each

1 - Intel STL2 DUAL S370 ATX SCSI LAN VIDEO - OEM Warranty: 1 year
Price: $109.00

1 - Thermaltake Mambo VC2000BNS Mid Tower Case (Black) Retail ***Free Shipping*** - Drive Bays: 11
Price: $44.99:
After Rebate: $24.99 - Mail-In Rebate: $20.00 Expires 08/14/06

1 - D-Link DGE-530T PCI NIC
Price: $24.99

1- Raidmax Workstation RX-380K 380W Power Supply - If you want a quiet one then buy one or hack this one with a quiet fan
Price: $19.99

Total so far: appox $282

Add in a SATA or PATA raid card and drives and bam. There are two PCI-X slots at 64 bit/66 MHz so if you really wanted a high quality PCI-X sever NIC or two striped RAID cards then you have much cheaper alternative with this set of gear. You could also spend more on the CPUs as well.

Heck when I get home I'm ordering one of those cases. 8)

I'm not bothered by the performance aspect - data reliability is my concern.

The Highpoint cards are basically software raid dependent on a combination of BIOS & OS drivers doing the work. The issue with that is the potential risks with switching OS's or guranteeing coninued driver support.

In any case, the main costs are in the disks, and I'd need to spend some more a few extra components to push this over the edge for me. However building a DIY RAID is still a very valid idea for purposes other mine (i.e. backup). If you want a fileserver to keep all your data handy and have a backup regime in place, you're fine with DIY like the article describes.

I understand were you are coming from but my experience says otherwise.

I've run various versions of rocketraid cards for years, never had a problem with reliability. I've had a couple of people bring in SI based cards and promise fasttrak cards that died, but never an nvraid, highpoint, or adaptec. Saying these type of raid controllers have reliability problems is like saying RAID 5 is useless since it only allows one drive to fail. Sure you can get RAID6 on cached controllers, but you pay a LOT more for nothing.

I've built hundreds of RAID rigs, probably 20 or more with high end scsi solutions, none that I have built have ever had a problem except the occasional overheated HD failing. Never once had a controller fail. Though like I said, I've had to replace some promise and si based cards. I think luck plays a big role no matter what you get.

I have transfered various arrays from computer to computer. I've had success going from si cards to fastrak and rocketraid cards (might have had the same chipset, didn't bother to check) and I've gotten adaptec arrays to move to rocketraids. These were all when they needed larger capacity controllers, and a couple that wanted me to do online expansion with my rocketraid since their controller didn't support it. I've never had an nvraid array work on anything else, too proprietary I suppose, but board with that are a dime a dozen.

I'm not, in any way, suggesting there is anything wrong with these cards, or that they are not reliable.

All I'm saying is that they are not true hardware RAID. Therefore they offload the RAID5 calculation on the CPU (which is not necessarily a problem). There are also many expensive cards that do this. Adaptec and promise make both hardware and software RAID cards. The only issue with software-based RAID cards is that you are heavily dependent on driver support, as oposed to hardware cards.

I am however very interested in your information about moving arrays from card to card. That really surprised me (pleasantly ).

I'll give the RocketRaids another look, especially since they make some PCI compatible models. Thanks!

Sorry I came on kinda strong. When I run benchmarks with my 2320, cpu usage is around 2-4% peaking at 5-6 at rare times (writing lots of data to the array while moving data around on it also). When using nvraid or built in SI controllers I've seen as much as 20%, so it does offload some of the work. The 1640 uses around 10%, but it's on a much slower machine, P4 2Ghz vs athlon 64 3700+, the 2320 is running raid5 while the 1640 is running raid1, hard to compare the two really, but the 2320 is certainly not a slouch.

Well, I'm probably ordering a 1820A which apparently works on old PCI slots too (though I have a feeling, I'll need to slice off the back of it or the PCI-X card won't fit). I don't want to try the 1640 because according to highpoint its RAID 5 is slower and my CPU is a p3 800.

Dude, don't slice anything off! PCI-X cards will fit in a regular pci slot, no problem, you'll just be limited to the 133 peak transfer, theoretical of course. You won't be dissapointed though.

I'd love to do this unfortunately none of this equipment is availble in the UK.