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I have a friend who wants to build a deceent sized machine with a ton of storage space. He is a photographer and is going digital in a few months. He will be storing tons of large photos on this machine, and will be using different adobe products. He needs a machine with a ton of storage space and RAID5. Any suggestions? Is there a good motherboard with a good built in raid controller, or should I buy a seperate card. Price is a concern, so we are looking at IDE drives rather than SCSI.
Unless a company such as Tyan or Supermicor have a P4 board with IDE RAID 5 on it, I don't know of any that do. A few have RAID 0 or 1 such as the Abit TH7II-RAID (Socket 478) or TH7-RAID (Socket 423) (both i850 based boards) & a couple of the MSI range. It looks as if your friend will have to get a seperate controller card to run RAID 5 arrays.
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I am my own Judge , Jury & Executioner. Although I am availabel for Weddings, Birthdays, Bahmitzvahs, etc,etc......
Thanks Darren, do you know of any good IDE RAID controllers?
The Adaptec PCI IDE RAID controllers are very good but very expensive. The Promise version is also good but I cannot remember off hand if this has RAID 5 functionality or not.
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I am my own Judge , Jury & Executioner. Although I am availabel for Weddings, Birthdays, Bahmitzvahs, etc,etc......
I've been pretty happy with the 3Ware IDE RAID controller. And at under $400, it would be hard to beat the price, I think.
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I was just quoted on the following specs from a local shop.
Teac 16X/10X/40X CDRW w/Roxio 5.0 Easy CD Creator
CPU-P4-1.7-R
Intel® Pentium 4 1.7G Socket 423 Retail Box
InWin (P4) S508-IW Mid Tower ATX Case w/ 300W PS
Toshiba 16X/40X IDE DVD-ROM
Teac 1.44 Floppy Drive
3 Ware Escalade 6800 IDE Raid 5 Controller
4 Western Digital 80G 7200 RPM ATA/100 IDE Hard Drive
Keytronics PS/2 104 Keyboard
MSI 850 Pro ( MS-6339 )P4 850 Chipset Mainboard
TRENDnet TFM560 56K V.90 Fax/Modem
2 256 MB RAMBUS 800MHZ RIMM
Microsoft PS/2 Intellimouse
Power Color M64 32MB TNT2 AGP Video Card
1 Year Parts and Labor Warranty
total: 2,492.01
Gpint, i wouldn't go with teh Socket 423 P4 unles you don't intend on upgrading this system for a long long time. The Socket 423 has now been'discontinued' and has been replaced by the Socket 478, which Intel now will make the faster chips on only. The Abit TH7-II series has the S478 socket / i850 combination, and is getting very very good write ups (and deservedly so as well).
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I am my own Judge , Jury & Executioner. Although I am availabel for Weddings, Birthdays, Bahmitzvahs, etc,etc......
Thanks for the info Darren. I will be sure to go for the 478. Also would you recommend the Adaptec card over the 3Ware.
I haven't used teh 3Ware card personally but they are all about the same really to be honest.
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I am my own Judge , Jury & Executioner. Although I am availabel for Weddings, Birthdays, Bahmitzvahs, etc,etc......
I think what you really ought to do is find out why he wants to keep so much data on a hard drive. I work with an aerial photography company and they archive photo's onto CD's. When the job is done, it's done. They keep about 10% of their photo's (thier more popular shots) on the hard drive for quick access for advertising and new clients, and a few reprints.
Be a real friend and look at the business process, not just the technology.
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