RAID5 file server build advice

[XS Janus]

Thank you so much guys for all your inputs so far.


@stevecs: I hope you wont have any medical problems with your fingers for making such a long post on my account.
PS. I tried to download your attachment put it sais link is invalid. ??

1. I definitely want a RAID card cause I don't wanna think about what happens when my mobo fails or worse, becomes unstable!

The Promise SuperTrak EX8350 and the Areca 1220 have a great layout for my needs (or so I believe).
Both are PCIe, (low-profile If needed), use regular SATA cables and have good access to their connection points.
Areca I can't buy locally and that makes the expensive card even more expensive.
Other vendors I looked at have better cards as PCI-X only(Adaptec, LSi), and SATA ones usually use add-on proprietary cables(3ware)
Any critical lack of functionality or other reason why Promise card costs 150-200$ less than other choices?
So far it seems like a smarter choice.

2. I want RAID5 cause it will offer enough security for storing movies and other media.
All this data is not really mission critical or irreplaceable. My business files and other family stuff i can backup separately on clients or dvd's. Down time is not really serious issue in my case, more of an inconvenience.
It will protect my data however from a most frequent occurrence and that is single drive failure.
I wanted go with only RAID5 in my system and divide it to C,D for boot and data.
Is there a major down side for this?
What happens to my array when I add a drive? Can I choose witch one to enlarge C: or D: drive?

3. I will grow my array to 8 drives max on one card only when prices drop a little. Wasn't really thinking of going with complicated Raid levels cause they would be wasteful for my needs and as mentioned will limit the array expansion.

4. It is interesting you mentioned /read/rite will be capped at 50MiB/sec per client on a windows platform. I read that in one of your posts on this forum before.
Is that the way they designed the platform or is it just a bug that maybe has a chance of being corrected in Server 2008??
I would consider going Linux but all that seems complicated to me as I never had any contact with it.
Support is more accessible and familiar for windows users is it not?
Does the Linux platform offer any more speed, and what bottlenecks those setups first?
I could live with that cause 1gb network wont give me much more and now I'm getting 35read and 16write on MS WHS server.

5. I wanted 1TB WD1000FYPS RE2 version of the GreenPower lineup drives. I already got one but was thinking of selling it cause I stupidly bought EACS version before I even had this idea. And lower performance wont be a problem for non demanding tasks at hand, and win throughput cap, no?
WD and Samsung are the only options for me cause they both are low power, Seagate and Hitachi are real power-hogs. Any info on Samsungs Raid abilities, the aren't exactly known for disks.
Any links or more info that would sway me from WD drives in Raid or learn more about them?
I found the dropping drives problem on YS series, but that was fixed with an update, no? Any other issues? WD is a respectable company after all.

Please stay with this thread for a while longer, I'm sure I'll think of something more to ask, thanks for all of your times!