Best IDE RAID card

[cyanghost109]

Hello everyone!

I am in the process of building a NAS server. I have two IDE drives, one which is a 320 GB Western Digital drive and the other is an old 80 GB Seagate drive. My storage options are limited, I know. Can anyone recommend an affordable IDE RAID card that will run out of the box with FreeNAS? I would like to put the drives in RAID 0 mode, and possibly others later on for experimentation.

Thanks! Apologies if something like this has been posted already. If so, please point me to the thread. :)

Hardware in case this matters for whatever reason:
AMD Athlon 64 2800+ 1.8 GHz CPU
1 GB RAM
20 GB Maxtor drive (This one is being plugged in the motherboard and will hold the OS)
320 GB WD Drive + 80 GB Drive (these will go in RAID 0 mode)
ATI Radeon 9000 video card
Old 100 Mbps Linksys NIC

 

[cyberjock]

Well, I don't think you have this well planned. 1GB of RAM is far, far too little to use ZFS(which is the only way to use any type of RAID configuration as far as I know). Even people with 4GB of RAM have issues with FreeNAS not crashing under ZFS. I wouldn't even try to use ZFS without at least 4GB of RAM.

Read section 1.4 of the manual and you'll understand.

 

[cyanghost109]

Well, I don't think you have this well planned. 1GB of RAM is far, far too little to use ZFS(which is the only way to use any type of RAID configuration as far as I know). Even people with 4GB of RAM have issues with FreeNAS not crashing under ZFS. I wouldn't even try to use ZFS without at least 4GB of RAM.

Read section 1.4 of the manual and you'll understand.

Thanks cyberjock! I do appreciate your response and concern. However, you didn't answer my question. Getting a more higher end system is set in stone, however I don't have the money for that at this moment. I should also point out that I want to learn how to use FreeNAS before purchasing the recommended hardware to do so.

If you could point out an IDE RAID card, I would appreciate that. Thanks! :)

 

[survive]

Hi cyanghost109,

If you want a hardware RAID card I would think you want something like and old Areca 7000 series. That said, it looks like you just need a simple IDE controller card, like an old Promise controller or something.

Will the system even boot off USB? If so, I'd toss the 20GB drive and just use the on-board controller for the other 2.

-Will

 

[pirateghost]

why are you going to raid0 the 2 ide drives? you realize that you will only have 160*gb usable out of that right? At that point, the 320gb drive is a waste

 

[cyberjock]

Thanks cyberjock! I do appreciate your response and concern. However, you didn't answer my question. Getting a more higher end system is set in stone, however I don't have the money for that at this moment. I should also point out that I want to learn how to use FreeNAS before purchasing the recommended hardware to do so.

If you could point out an IDE RAID card, I would appreciate that. Thanks! :)

Ah, 99% of people that go for a RAID card incorrectly assume that a zpool RAID must have a RAID controller. Because I made that assumption my "answer" didn't really help.

As pirateghost asked, I'm not sure if you realize that you'll be giving up more storage space than the entire RAID0 will be if you use an 80GB with a 320GB. Normally, I'd say if its for speed and you won't really need 160+GB of disk space that's a smart choice, but your post says you are using a 10/100 NIC, which means that your bottleneck even without the RAID will still be your network interface(12MB/sec max anyone?).

 

[cyanghost109]

Apologies for the late reply. I put this project aside and decided to start up on it again. Thank you for the explanations pirateghost and cyberjock. In my first post, I mentioned that I would like to experiment with other RAID types. Hopefully you were able to infer that I'm not very experienced with this stuff. The speeds wouldn't be the fastest, but it will do for me.

So, do I need two drives of the same capacity? I might just end up buying two new drives.

 

[tstorzuk]

For an IDE RAID card, you can try getting a LSI Logic MegaRAID i4. It will support up to 8 IDE HDD's. About $25 bucks for a card. I have a bunch in storage somewhere, just sitting around. Maybe some day I'll get them on eBay......

An OLD version of FreeNAS should be able to run it easilly (FreeNAS i386 0.69.2.4700 is what I have running on one of my servers using old IDE drives). Don't try running FreeNAS 8 with IDE drives, as it won't be worth your while.

You typically want to run the exact same drives for any hardware RAID. Same volume size, so that you can use the full capacity of the drives. But if you have to buy drives anyways, wait until you are ready for a higher end server that can run SATA drives. You'll save money in the long run.

 

[cyberjock]

Apologies for the late reply. I put this project aside and decided to start up on it again. Thank you for the explanations pirateghost and cyberjock. In my first post, I mentioned that I would like to experiment with other RAID types. Hopefully you were able to infer that I'm not very experienced with this stuff. The speeds wouldn't be the fastest, but it will do for me.

So, do I need two drives of the same capacity? I might just end up buying two new drives.

You missed my comment about the RAM. Even for experimenting the system will crash so frequently you won't be able to use it. The performance won't matter if the file system is constantly being corrupted because of kernel panics. When ZFS gets corrupted it simply becomes unmountable(aka you lose all of the data in the zpool forever). You'd never be able to do anything with the system. You really need 6GB+ before the system is stable at all. The 6GB recommendation in the manual is no joke and really is the absolute minimum I'd ever recommend, even for testing.

Additionally, your question is answered if you read the manual and the slideshow I created in the noobie section of the forum(its a sticky).

An OLD version of FreeNAS should be able to run it easilly (FreeNAS i386 0.69.2.4700 is what I have running on one of my servers using old IDE drives). Don't try running FreeNAS 8 with IDE drives, as it won't be worth your while.

Any version prior to 8.0 is NOT part of this project despite having the same name.

You typically want to run the exact same drives for any hardware RAID. Same volume size, so that you can use the full capacity of the drives. But if you have to buy drives anyways, wait until you are ready for a higher end server that can run SATA drives. You'll save money in the long run.

Hardware RAIDs are NOT recommended for ZFS at all if you value your data. This is discussed fully in the manual, the FAQ, as well as discussed to death in the forums.