OK, so I have been using an e-SATA box made by Silverstone that uses a Si3132 host controller pci card in my Vista Ultimate HTPC and a port multiplier card in the e-SATA box with Silicon Image's SATARAID5 Management Software.  I've had nothing but trouble with the software and had my first port multiplier card failure within 6 months of purchase.  I have 5 Seagate 750 GB drives in 2 RAID5 arrays (each array uses half of each of the 5 drives) for 2 1.36 TB arrays.  I have about 1.1 TB of data on one of the RAID5 arrays; the other array was empty.  Recently the empty array failed for some reason and I cannot get the software to rebuild the array--it keeps creating orphans.  So, I've had it with this software RAID solution.

 

I also have 3 Seagate 750 GB drives  inside my HTPC case that are in a RAID5 array and provide 1.36TB of usable storage; I use a 400GB drive for OS & apps.  The reason I have all these drives in RAID5 is because I had 2 different hard drive failures in 2 different PCs last year and swore to myself that I wouldn't lose data again.

 

I think that I can take the 5 half disks in the e-SATA box that will not build a RAID5 array and transfer all the data that is on the RAID5 array that uses the other half of each drive, then delete the working RAID5 array and convert all disks to pass-thru and avoid losing any data--I think!!  I can spare up a couple of 750's to start the unRAID array or I'll just buy 1-2 more (maybe 1TB if price is right).  So, I will end up with at least 8 750GB drives in the unRAID.

 

Here are some components I have lying around and wonder if they would be suitable to use with the unRAID OS:

 

*ASUS A8N-SLI Premium NVIDIA nForce 4 Mobo

*AMD Athlon 64 4000+ with HTT (2.4 MHz)

*2x1024 PATRIOT Dual Channel DDR PC-3200 @ 400Mhz

 

I'll buy the rest of the components.

 

Please advise if these will work OK.

 

Thanks!   

I believe your parts look fine, with some caveats.  unRAID currently only supports 1 gig of RAM, but I think it likely that additional RAM will be supported in the near future.  And only one CPU core is currently used, but that may change soon too.

 

I'm almost positive I have seen others using that motherboard successfully, and indeed it does appear to be (in my limited research) the one nForce4 board with considerable success, particularly among gamers.  I personally have very strong reservations against any nForce4 or earlier board, as I had a disastrous experience with a Biostar nForce4 board, with problems widely reported in very long and angry threads that are nForce4 related.  The nForce5 series and later have apparently fixed the problems with the earlier nForce boards.  ASUS is apparently the only one that tried hard with repeated BIOS updates to make it work.  The other makers (especially a very silent nVidia) gave up and waited for the first nForce5 chipsets.

 

You mention port multiplier stuff.  That is currently not supported in unRAID, in the current Linux kernel, but will probably appear in the near future.  I don't recommend using it yet, until it has proven reliable, in a later release.

 

Rob,

 

Thanks very much for the replies.  Hmmm, well now I guess I am unsure about the A8N main board--so I will have to ponder that some more.

 

No, I don't intend to use the port multiplier with the unRAID box; my current outboard storage device uses an eSATA to a device that has a port multiplier in it to support 5 HDD.  I've been having trouble with it--I think mainly the SATARAID5 Manager software and/or Vista.  So, I am looking at the unRAID OS as a potential vehicle to ditch the Silverstone DS-351--it's very pretty but the software seems to suck and I haven't found a software raid manager that indicates it can work with the Sil3132 Host Controller so I could substitute for the SATARAID5 Manager.

 

Thanks again!

 

Dan