For the past while I’ve been itching to build a storage array and/or a NAS. The reason for the need & desire for a storage solution is that between my wife and myself, we have hundreds of gigs of photos, home movie, music & ripped movies spread across 3 computers, multiple backups and some of stuff stored on DVD-Rs. Basically our current data storage & backup solution is CRAP!

So, I’ve tossed back & forth the idea of getting one of the off the shelf NAS devices by Thecus, Netgear, LaCie or Buffalo. I am mostly considering one of the Thecus devices. I believe they are running Linux, which I really like. Plus they provide a long laundry list of features amoung their devices. I have been looking at one of the N4100 serious or the N5200. The N4100s supports 4 SATA drives and the N5200 holds 5. Either would work. They all support RAID 0, 1, 5 and JBOD. The networking options are pretty nice to.

The other option I have kicked around was using an existing machine, loading it with SATA disks and then using FreeNAS or rolling my own solution with Linux to manage the data store. Doing it this way adds some limitation. One limit is the bus speed. In my existing system I only have standard PCI slots. Then in my box of extra motherboards, processors & parts I am still limited by only having PCI slots. It would be nice to have a system with PCI-X for PCI-Express slots, but to go out and upgrade a full system to gain that level of bus speed is not economical.

The next limit I have is cold hard cash!

OK, I am not truly limited on the financial side, but I do prefer to be on the cheap side. I don’t like to spend too much on items that I know I can get similar functionality from a less expensive items. The cost of a “true” hardware RAID card is way out of my mental budget. I can’t see paying over $200 for a damn expansion card. That means I am looking at RAID enabled cards that are providing software RAID, a.k.a. Fake RAID. The software RAID provided on the expansion cards can be a step above the “fake” RAID provided on most modern motherboards. That doesn’t sit all that well in the pit of my stomach. Not after recently talking with a co-worker that lost a lot of personal data because the RAID on his motherboard failed & corrupted his hard drives. He was running a 1+0 RAID across 4 drives. He should have been pretty safe against failure, but he wasn’t. I am looking at running RAID for the reliability factor. After that story I am over all worried. Myself, I would not run anything but RAID 5.

So knowing that I am not going to put out the cash for a full hardware RAID card & I am still not sure if I am going to do an external NAS system. I am left at looking at rolling my own solution using the software RAID provided by a sub 200 dollar SATA RAID card or buying any cheap SATA card that provides 4 to 8 ports and using the RAID capabilities built into the Linux kernel. This final solution doesn’t scare me too much. I am pretty damn sure that the reliability of the Linux kernel’s RAID is good. I would bet most of the software RAID cards are running embedded Linux anyways and using the RAID stack within the card.

So now the research and testing starts. I have purchased 4 1 terabyte SATA II hard drives. I still need a SATA controller to drive the hard drives and a raid cage to hold the hard drives. I am currently scowering newegg.com, Tiger Direct and other sites for highly rated SATA controllers that work well with Linux. Once I buy the controller and start my testing I will post the next piece of RAID to the AID.

-Ken