[SATLUG] fileserver SATA + RAID question

[Travis H.]

> Also, I would stay away from SW RAID-5, as you will take a CPU performance
> hit, and you lose much of the advantace of a UDMA system (speed wise) anyway.

But CPU power is cheap, right?  I mean, there's a well-documented cycle where:
1) The CPU isn't powerful enough to support it, so people make a dedicated card
2) The CPU increases to the point where it makes sense to do it
without dedicated HW
3) They evolve new functionality and jump to step 1

But yeah I can see how this doesn't take advantage of UDMA.  I guess I
see why they're putting RAID chips in the mobo chipsets now.

> The coolest setup is Hot Swap SATA hardware RAID (like what 3ware has now) if
> you can afford it... That's the thing to have.. :)

That sounds interesting; how do you access the functionality of the
cards?  I mean, I've got to set up some stuff in a BIOS probably, but
are there commands I have to issue to fix things once it's running and
how would I do that without rebooting to get to the BIOS?

Also, will I be able to use those drives in a software RAID if the
controller dies?

I'm thinking RAID-5 with three SATA drives is what I want.  I really
only have slots for three drives (and that entails taking out the
extant PATA "bulk data" drive I have in there now).