Help trim down my spec .. Media Server

[CountStex]

Software RAID5? I thought the Promise controller was for hardware RAID5...

Not at £59.. true hardward RAID-5 doesn't come in at under £300 normally.. there are FakeRAID ones for less of course, but from experience Linux doesn't see the arrays on these, just the drives themselves.

[8bit]

Ah I see. Your other option would be to get hold of a Revo64 3-port or 5-port card. They don't do RAID5, they're RAID3 which offers the same redundancy level, similar read performance and better write performance than RAID5. The 3-port version is about £24 from scan.co.uk just now and it is supported in the Linux kernels included from Ubuntu Edgy onwards.

That would save you another £35 which (combined with dropping the 2x 80GB drives and the disk cage) brings your savings to £126. That brings you not too far beyond your £500 price point.

[CountStex]

Ah I see. Your other option would be to get hold of a Revo64 3-port or 5-port card. They don't do RAID5, they're RAID3 which offers the same redundancy level, similar read performance and better write performance than RAID5. The 3-port version is about £24 from scan.co.uk just now and it is supported in the Linux kernels included from Ubuntu Edgy onwards.

That would save you another £35 which (combined with dropping the 2x 80GB drives and the disk cage) brings your savings to £126. That brings you not too far beyond your £500 price point.

Now you're just getting clever! Sounds a very promising line of enquiry, I shall look into it. Scan tends to be my preferred choice as I can call in on the way home from work