Homebrew NAS

[kojak71]

I want to build an AV storage server that will house my film & TV recordings made using MCE2005 (DVR-MS). These recordings require a lot of space, so I'm looking to build a large raid array with some redundancy (so something like raid3 or raid5) with a minimum of 4x500Gb drives. I've got various bits and pieces in my spare parts bin

Intel P4 2.2GHz (FSB 400MHz) + Intel 850 based motherboard + 512Mb RDRAM
AMD 3200 CPU + VIA based socket939 motherboard
Several SATAII hard-drives
Intel gigabit NIC
Spare copy of Windows 2000

Both these barebones systems don't have any on-board or on-chip SATA RAID3/5 solutions. So I've got several options, either:
Purchase a PCI add-on RAID card or PCI-X one that is backwards compatible with 32 bit PCI.
Recylce the CPU on a more modern motherboard that has either on-board or on-chip SATA RAID3/5 solution.

Any suggestions (apart from the telling me to encode the DVR-MS files to divx/xvid). Performance of the NAS is not the primary concern (although it should be fast enough to stream the video), robustness of the array is.

So far I've seen a Highpoint Tech. card (2220) that should be able to do the job. I was looking to get XFX Revo RAID3 5 port card, but no-one sells it anymore.

[KingLouie3]

Scan are doing the xfx revo card for £17 quid on today's only special.

I built a homebrew nas server based on a Pentium D820 cpu and Asus P5PE-VM motherboard. I used the xfx revo card for setting up the storage on raid 3.

I am looking into getting a celeron cpu to see if it is more energy efficient and recycle the Pentium D820.

Hope this helps!

[kojak71]

I wanted a minimum of 5 ports. But at that price it might be worth just giving it a try

[Funkstar]

there is a 5port XFX revo card.

Be aware that there is limited technical support for this card. The original manufacturer has gone out of business and all support is done by XFX. There are not software or firmware updates.

I have a 5port card and don't really trust it with my data. although the problems i had could have been to do with the Maxtor drives.

[Steve B]

its a software raid card anyhoo, so it'll be projecting a memory overhead on your pc to make it run

[dangel]

its a software raid card anyhoo, so it'll be projecting a memory overhead on your pc to make it run

The box here says it has a RISC processor onboard..

[Steve B]

ahh my bad apologies

[dangel]

ahh my bad apologies

No worries - I just happen to have bought one a while back (and it's still working fine AFAIK) so the box is on the shelf behind me

[Funkstar]

The XFX is kind of a hybrid card i think. It masks the drives and show Windows only the RAID volum as one drive. You don't need specific drivers etc. If i remember right, the processor on board isn't a dedicated RAID processor, but just run the software on the card.

[kojak71]

Unfortunately I can't find anywhere in the UK that still sells the 5-port version. The drives I intend to use will be WD 500Gb RE2.

What about other controller card alternatives?

[toomanycooks]

I've sent you a pm as I have a 5 port card for sale if you are interested.