Natively supported inexpensive RAID cards

[Mike Loiterman]

Gayn Winters <mailto:gayn.winters at bristolsystems.com> wrote:
>> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Mike
>> Loiterman Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 11:57 PM
>> To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>> Subject: Natively supported inexpensive RAID cards
>> 
>> 
>> I'm looking to setup a 4 drive SATA RAID 5 file server for mp3, avi,
>> and other media using 6.0-RELEASE.
>> 
>> It appears that the supported SATA RAID cards listed in
>> /stand/help/HARDWARE.TXT are all over $400.00.  That's hard for to
>> justify for this application, unless there are no other choices.
>> 
>> I'd like to keep this simple, so if the price for that is $450
>> bucks, well, I guess I'll have to deal with that.  But, I figured it
>> wouldn't hurt to ask if are there any well supported SATA RAID cards
>> (meaning setup automatically recognizes an array setup in the RAID
>> card's BIOS as one drive) in the $100 to $200 range.  I don't need
>> anything other than 5, but other levels would be nice for future
>> use.  Even better would be a motherboard with onboard RAID that
>> FreeBSD supported natively. 
>> 
>> If there aren't any such cards or motherboards, are there relatively
>> easy work-arounds using less expensive cards?
> 
> Have you considered software RAID5?
> 
> -gayn
> 
> Bristol Systems Inc.
> 714/532-6776
> www.bristolsystems.com

I have, and I use it for a RAID 1 server I'm running now.

For this application I think hardware makes it more sense.  My gut feel is
that it will probably be faster, for RAID 5, to do it in hardware.  Am I
wrong? 

------------------------------
Mike Loiterman
grantADLER
Tel: 630-302-4944
Fax: 773-442-0992
Email: mike at ascendency.net
PGP Key: 0xD1B9D18E