Re: Advice on RAID card

> It looks like a rebranded low end Adaptec 64MB PCI-X <-> SATA RAID card.
> Looks like the 64MB buffer is not upgradable.
> Looks like it's SATA, not SATA II

    Yeah, that's exactly what it is. I can get one for 150 Euro, the Areca is
at least 600. This is for a budget server so while it would be nice to
have all the high-tech stuff, it's not the point. My question was raher,
is it one of the crap RAID5 cards which are actually SLOWER than plain IDE
disks, or is it decent, even though low-end (and cheap), and worth it
compared to software RAID5 ?

> Assuming you are not building 1U boxes, get one of the full height
> cards and order it with the maximum size buffer you can afford.
> The cards take 1 SODIMM, so that will be a max of 1GB or 2GB
> depending on whether 2GB SODIMMs are available to you yet.

    It's for a budget dev server which should have RAID5 for reliability, but
not necessarily stellar performance (and price). I asked about this card
because I can get one at a good price.

    Thanks for taking the time to answer.