I started out in 1999 with an adaptec 2400a raid controller and 4 ata120 drives. Yes I have also lost raid cards and after replacing the card the raid array complete with data comes right back up. As a side note when I purchased my first 2400a it cost around $260 I just found the same card online for $58. Is it obsolete? Maybe. But it has saved me from the wrath of Wife and saved a lot of priceless family foto's.
My recommendation is to start out with what you can afford. $500 is doable for a backup system. In two or three years upgrade. Put some better faster storage out there but make it hardware based.
Just my opinion, but born from trying both and not being happy with the results of software raids.
Dave
If your data is valuable enough to use raid, then hardware raid is the only way to go. If you have a problem with the os the data is lost. I have had the os go out on my home storage server several times over the years but have not lost data because I was using hardware raid. Siig puts out a nice little 4 port sata raid and Adaptec and 3ware also put out some great cards. A 500Mhz system with a gig of ram, a gigabit card and a raid card will serve you far better than a 3ghz system with less ram and software raid.
Dave
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I started out in 1999 with an adaptec 2400a raid controller and 4 ata120 drives. Yes I have also lost raid cards and after replacing the card the raid array complete with data comes right back up. As a side note when I purchased my first 2400a it cost around $260 I just found the same card online for $58. Is it obsolete? Maybe. But it has saved me from the wrath of Wife and saved a lot of priceless family foto's. My recommendation is to start out with what you can afford. $500 is doable for a backup system. In two or three years upgrade. Put some better faster storage out there but make it hardware based. Just my opinion, but born from trying both and not being happy with the results of software raids. Dave
If your data is valuable enough to use raid, then hardware raid is the only way to go. If you have a problem with the os the data is lost. I have had the os go out on my home storage server several times over the years but have not lost data because I was using hardware raid. Siig puts out a nice little 4 port sata raid and Adaptec and 3ware also put out some great cards. A 500Mhz system with a gig of ram, a gigabit card and a raid card will serve you far better than a 3ghz system with less ram and software raid. Dave