Need more fast storage space or fileserver - options?

Hi all,

Okay - here's the deal. I've running a pair of Raptor74's in RAID-0, using my DFI's onboard NVRAID controller. I'm used to the speed, and they work very well, but:

a) I need more storage space, and
b) I'm becoming increasingly twitchy about running them in a non-fault tolerant configuration, and not so importantly
c) The kid in me really wants to build a file-server (as if I don't have enough of that at work, lol). If I use WS2003, I'll be able to do funky SSL and stuff.. :)


I could buy a couple more raptors, move to RAID 5, and gain the space of one. I'd not be particularly happy using the 'software' raid5 of the Silicon Image controller on the DFI, so would need an add-in controller? I don't have PCI-X, so I'm thinking that all the decent controllers like Adaptec and 3ware would be wasted? Plus, because of the SLI setup, an add-in card would have to be half-height so as not to block the airflow of one of the 6800's.

If I wanted to build terms of building the above solution into a seperate 'server' system, what spec machine wouldn't let down that kind of disc setup? I've got a P3-733 with 128MB RDRAM sitting doing nothing with a Gigabit LAN card in it - but I suspect that'll be a bit lame. In terms of LAN connectivity, theoretically Gigabit ethernet (even taking into account the overheads) should be close enough to my current Raptor setup throughput, but it'd probably be the bottleneck in a 4xRaptor system, no? Would it be a waste of a good array?


Excuse the ramblings, any advice/thoughts would be most appreciated,
S.