superbeast writes: > 1. I was thinking about going with 8 200gb SATA hdd. I guess I would > get the 3Ware 8-port SATA controller and use hw raid 5. There are > alot of arguments about using sw vs. hw raid, but I think I need the > controller anyways just to support 8 drives in one box. Is that right? Hardware RAID is much better. There are many advantages to having it separate from the OS. One of them being you can boot from it. > 2.I'm thinking about performing daily backups to the hdd rather than > tape. The raid will protect them from hdd failure, and they only need > 5 days worth of backups. I think the only problem would be with a > disaster situation. Any other thoughts? Backing up to IDE HDs is almost always the cheapest solution. Backing up to the same RAID array will protect you from accidental deletions, etc., but not from the entire array being corrupted (unlikely, but possible). > 4. It seems to me that I could build a decent file server with 1.2tb > for between $3k and $4k. Am I missing something? Nope. The company I work for has built several like that recently. They work quite well. -- David Phillips <david at acz.org> http://david.acz.org/ _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota Help beta test TCLUG's potential new home: http://plone.mn-linux.org Got pictures for TCLUG? Beta test http://plone.mn-linux.org/gallery tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list