"Monte Oates" wrote in message
news:1o55d.93585$%S.85565@pd7tw2no...
Using the Adaptec RAID adapter is a scary proposition.

Only to the incompetent.

In the event of a
server failure the only way to ensure the integrity of your data is have
battery backed up cache.

The only way to ensure that the data held at that instant in the cache(could
be none) is not lost is to have some sort of battery support. A UPS is
often sufficient. Losing some data in the cache does NOT mean that you have
lost all integrity...just a small amout of the most recent data.

Otherwaise, any data that resides in cache that has
not yet commited to disk would be lost.
One big piece of advice is to try to avoid the temptation of using large
capacity ATA disk

One big piece of advice is avoid this guy's advice.

as the rebuild time would be lengthy and exposes you to
the potential of total data loss since you are running in degraded mode
for
a longer period of time.

That's utterly ridiculous. There's nothing special about ATA as the same
applies to a SCSI array. The window of vulnerability you describe has a
very small risk. Ever hear of hot spare? Evere hear of big SCSI HDs? Ever
hear of small ATA HD?

Try using external RAID as the levels of redundancy are way better

Pure trash especially when a price performance analysis is done?

"Toto" wrote in message
...
I intend to build a small server for my (6 Win XP computers) home LAN,
to
backup my Data (and store some original documents).

Adaptec 2410SA Serial ATA Raid card seems to be a nice choice in terms
of
price : you can use 4 cheap disks in Raid 5 mode to "secure" a capacity
of
3. If I understood correctly, if ONE disk crashes, it's quit easy to
"rebuilt" its content with the parity data. Specially if a 24/7 capacity
is
not that important...

I never built any Raid, so it's quite difficult for me to understand
wether
it's a good choice in terms of real security for my data : what happens
if
there is a "general" crash of the server (accidental reboot, no more AC,
controler Card burning...). Will I loose ALL the data of the array ? Has
the system a capacity to recover at least a part of data ?

And is the Adaptec 2410SA reliable ? Hard AND soft ? More than the
(cheaper) Promise FastTrak S150 SX4 ? Should it be better (and easier to
build) to boot the PC from another disk (I've got some small capacity
disks
in my drawer...) and not from the Raid Array ?

Please help a newbie for a good choice...