Best External Storage Solution for SOHO Setups?

terradyn asks: "Recently, I've been looking for a cheap external storage subsystem solution. Aside from the fibre channel high end solutions out there (IBM FastT, HP EVA, etc.), I haven't been able to find much for the SOHO type market. My current best possibility is this. It provides the capacity and interface type I was looking for (8 bay, ATA6, 1394) but lacks features like RAID5 or NAS type abilities. Has anyone found a better solution with at least RAID5 in a similar or smaller form factor for use in the home (I need the space/speed/reliability for video work)?"

Comments

3ware

[cyb97]

Have you taken a look at 3ware ?
They make RAID controllers with RAID5 support, all based on ATA-IDE drives, the biggest controller supporting up to 12 drives.
They also support hotswap and all the other goodies you'd expect of a SCSI-RAID-system, but at the price of IDE ;-). (NO I do NOT work for them, nor do I resell them, just another happy customer).
There's hardware support for win/linux/freebsd (Not sure about Mac, but I've tried it under the 3 mentioned and it worked like a charm).

Re:SCSI attached IDE disks

[laughing_badger]

Toyed with the idea of getting one of these for the office but came to the conclusion that a linux box running hardware RAID from a 3ware controller card was better value. Transtec configured this exactly how I wanted it - I can highly recommend them. The 3ware card is pretty good too.

Oh, to be fair, the default Transtec keyboard sucks.

Is this cheap/large enough?

[satterth]

$250*1 3Ware 7500-4 (4 drive, raid 0,1,10,5)

$200*1 3Ware RDC-400 (4 bay hotswap enclosure)

$264*4 250GB Maxtor IDE Drives

=$1506 for 1.0TB (750GB Raid 5, hotswap)

You can throw all this into your system if you have 3 5-1/4 bays and a PCI slot free. Or invest in an extra computer and a couple gigabit network cards to make it external.

If you need more space than than then get a 7500-8 or 7500-12 and add more drives.