Somewhat of a noobish RAID card / RAID/ JBOD question

[nevets_1917]

A new member to LTT so if I'm breaking any rules or posting in the wrong area please forgive me.

 

I am working on cannibalizing some parts to make a (i guess you could call it a NAS or a server),  anyway the MOBO I am looking at using has three SATA ports.  I was intending on using one of them as a boot drive/scratch disk and running the others as storage.

 

I have also considered adding a cheap (cheap) 4 port RAID card.  My intention would be to use it to eventually build a RAID 5 array.  My question is, can a RAID card be used essentially as an expansion to add more HDDs (without necessarily creating a full on RAID array) maybe as a JBOD setup or are drives of a constant size required.  Ideally the setup would be something that I can add/remove/change drives without too many issues.

 

Any clarification is much appreciated

[Jonny]

Have a look at Flexraid its a software raid it can do jbod and raid 1,5,6 (http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/33510-how-to-install-and-setup-flexraid-on-your-windows-storage-system/)

 

It what I'm going to use for my new NAS server. Really easy to add and replace drives

[nevets_1917]

Cheers for that,  Can I use a RAID card to essentially gain more useable SATA ports though????

[Jonny]

Cheers for that,  Can I use a RAID card to essentially gain more useable SATA ports though????

On most raid card this should be possible. I am also going to use a cheap raid/sata card to expand my Sata ports, as my motherboard I'm using only has 2 stata ports.

[565465464]

You can get some LSI RAID controllers pretty cheap from Ebay. Here is an example, the performance wont be the best you can get but probably more than good enough and it supports RAID 5 and 6. You also need a SFF-8087 to SATA cable. I'm not sure if it is safe to go with cheap cables or not...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Sealed-LSI-9211-8i-SAS-SATA-8-port-PCI-E-6Gb-RAID-Controller-Card-/291219099498?pt=US_Computer_Disk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item43ce02cf6a

[Bottomburp]

I use a Dell Perc5i for exactly that application nevets_1917.

 

Using a Dell R200 server for a home server but it only has 3 internal SATA ports. The Perc card (which is just a re-branded LSI card) allows me to attach a further 8 SATA (or SAS) drives using a mixture of Raid and non-Raid.

[Joshua Ondangan]

You can get some LSI RAID controllers pretty cheap from Ebay. Here is an example, the performance wont be the best you can get but probably more than good enough and it supports RAID 5 and 6. You also need a SFF-8087 to SATA cable. I'm not sure if it is safe to go with cheap cables or not...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Sealed-LSI-9211-8i-SAS-SATA-8-port-PCI-E-6Gb-RAID-Controller-Card-/291219099498?pt=US_Computer_Disk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item43ce02cf6a

this.

 

best one I've seen so far well if you got the bread to slap with .

 

IMO having your own nas would be awesome .