[plug] SATA & Debian

[Tim Bowden]

Craig Ringer wrote:
> Tim Bowden wrote:
> 
>>> 3ware RAID will cost around $1100 depending. The one i bought can handle
>>> up to 8 HDD. We put 4x120 GB SATA HDDs RAID 5 and hotswapable.  The 
>>> motherboard is an intel entry server board, with PATA and SATA. so
>>> i guess i can have around 16 HDDs if i wanted. We have found the entry
>>> server boards to be quite reliable so far. NICs e100 and e1000 onboard.
>>>
>> There goes the budget...  Perhaps I should have said "very small file 
>> server"  2 x 80 gig mirrored disks will provide us with more storage 
>> than we can possibly use.  Looks like that one is well out of reach...
> 
> 
> I suggest, then, rethinking your choice of SATA. You can very cheaply 
> use basic PATA software RAID, or if you like you can use "hardware 
> assisted" (*ick*) software RAID like the HighPoint and Promise 
> controllers built-in to many motherboards.

One of the motherboards I have been looking at from trinix.com.au is the 
  Gigabyte GA-7N400PRO2 which has SATA RAID built in (Is this not /real/ 
RAID?).  I have no idea yet how good it is but it seems to be an option. 
  There are a number of SATA capable motherboards available for 
reasonable money.

As for downtime, a little is ok.  I don't need hot swap.  Even though 
the spin rates on the SATA drives is no faster than the PATA drives, the 
larger caches (8mb v 2mb) has to make them faster for writes at least 
(or have I got it all wrong?).

Going with SATA also gives the ability to drop in 10,000 rpm disks in 
about 12 - 18 months time when they are much cheaper and our needs are 
greater.

Tim Bowden