Lo to @, mates, I have some questions regarding RAID 5 level, I am planning to move on hardware based RAID 5 level with 4 sata or 4 pata drives.

I currently own 4 pata ide drives, one Maxtor Dimondmax 120GB/2mb, one Maxtor Dimondmax 120GB/8mb cache and two identical 120gb WD drives with 8mb.
On Sata Controller I got two Identical 160gb Maxtor Diamond 9 Sata drives with 8mb of cache. I am planning to buy 2 more Sata 160GB drives by WesternDigital with 8mb which I plan to combine with two Maxtor's.

First question is what do you think about combining different types of drives, like same capacity and different manufactures, one kind with 2mb and one with 8mb of cache but all on 7200 rpms.

Second question is, what is the best hardware based raid5 PCI controller card, for the smallest amount of money (cheapest like 40-90$), if its possible, based on XOR processor or Intel risc processor and which is better.

Third question is, I am planning to partition that raid volume, to two partitions, one with 5gb or 6gb for operating system (WinXP or Win2003) and rest in one big partition of 474 gb (4x1600GB).
First (smaller) partition, means to be Ghosted by some Imager, like Ghost 8 or 9 or Acronis True Image (Enterprise or Corporate) or Symantec "Goback" or you give me some Idea, I need imager which is capable to ghost Raid 5 partition, which I can ghost back from bootable DVD.

Thank you, full respect.

Different drives can be mixed together as long as they are the same size. I personally wouldn't do it unless I had to. Due to differences in cache/possibly different RPM's, and other different HD tech, performance may suffer. For best performance/reliability always use the same drives.

Look here:

http://www.3ware.com/products/serial_ata9000.asp

The 9500S-4LP only support 4 drives whereas the 9500S -8 supports 8.

Here's a review on the 9500S-4LP http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=9500s4lp&page=1&cookie%5Ftest=1

But I guess those are out of your price range......

If I was in your situation and didn't have enough money to go with the superior 3Ware cards then I'd go with Adaptec next:

Look here: http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/product...ource=solutions


Well backing up RAID 5 isn't that hard since the controller handles that part. The hard part is getting the imaging program to support the SCSI/PATA-addon/SATA controller. I've personally haven't used True Image with RAID 5 but I've heard it works. Whichever controller card you get you'll need to check the imaging documentation and make sure it supports that controller.

Thank you for your fast response, seems that 3ware superb controller is out of my price range (400$) and Adaptec is over 200$.
How about some new motherboards with integrated Raid 5 controller or how about some software version of Raid 5, what is real CPU usage, all tests and reviews on net are against software Raid 5.

If there is someone with practice on software and hardware Raid 5, please tell us your findings.