Raid NAS Again

OK - I think I am ready to start and build a NAS server to serve mainly media around the house. I currently have a 2.8Ghz P4 with 512Mb RAM. I have been running Debian on this and use this as my general server for things such as MySQL, SSH server to the outside, Apache Web Server, Tomcat server etc, MP3 server.

I like to take this and install probably 4-5 300/320GB HDD in this server - SATA drives so I need a PCI SATA adapter card. I will have a sepearte PATA drive for the OS (preferably Debian or another flavour of linux).

The questions:

The question is what level of RAID? - It seems from trawling the www that Raid 5 is the most popular for redundancy and performance. So this is probably the level of Raid I will use.

Which card?
XFX Revo 5-port: This card sounds appealing as its a full hardware based raid card - the OS sees it as a singular drive and there is no requirement for drivers. This is good from a linux point of view. However, there doesn't seem to be any linux support in terms of supporting apps for notification of Raid health.

Promise TX4: Seems to have linux driver support.

3Ware: Not sure which one.

Highpoint RocketRaid 1640: Not sure about this - not read much about it and linux support.

My main issue with the XFX card is that if the card fails - I guess I will lose my entire Raid array unless I can source an exact card. Hence one reason to get a fake raid card and let the OS do the raid. Will a 2.8Ghz P4 handle os raid ok?

I currently have an Antec Sonata case - but will probably get an Akasa Eclipse 62 box to house this server as there is reasonable room in there for future drive additions and has good facilities for quiet cooling (120mm fan facilities). Coolermaster Stacker was the other option but I think its too big (only live in a small flat) and the mesh front won't be good for silence (no where to hide this server so its out of noise range). I can even use the Coolermaster 4-in-3 drive housing and put some black mesh to hide it for addtional drive space with suitable cooling. Probably keep the current PSU though (380 watt) - guess this be enough presently to power 5-6 drives and the p4 - no fancy gaphics requirements (on board graphics).

I have looked at OpenFiler and NASLite which are lightweight linux distributions specifically for NAS applicances. I like to use a full blown linux distro because of other tasks this server will do such as print serving, database serving, caller id server, Squid HTTP Proxy server etc.

Any one provide any helpful advice with regards to a SATA card for linux raid? Or any helpful pointers or help with tackling this project?

I would recommend you to search ebay for 3Ware 8506-4 or 8506-8, there should be plenty of cheap one. These support RAID5 and have very reliable driver for all platforms :)

Don't bother with XFX, HPT and Promise, they're all windows-orientated and linux driver is pretty crap.

I would think you could just use Linux soft-raid. I haven't got a HDD dying on my for the past 18 months (thanks to good quality power supply). I opted for no raid. It is in some way more reliable in independent disks rather than RAID5 (bad reliability from SIL3114).

When you say you aren't using raid, you just have a bunch of disks? Or do you use a JBOD/LVM type scenario? I haven't had a hdd die on me yet (touch wood.....) as I seem to manage to upgrade and delegate old hdd's to other pc's which has small usage. However, when I build a server, I expect the disks to be there for quite a while so would like some level of redunduncy just in case.