My question is two fold... Firstly, I am interested in setting up a system to run sickbeard, couch potato, etc.  I wasn't planning on using a cache drive, but I see that I will need to install software on a disk other than the array.  I was wondering if, for the sake of fault tolerance, I can use my motherboard's onboard RAID controller to set up two mirrored disks and run all of my apps off of this?  This would be for fault tolerance purposes.  Probably 40 or 80GB disks mirrored.

 

Second, I am looking at the very low power Sempron as my base, at least to start with (I like the AM3's upgrade ability).  Wondering if some basic media downloading (TV shows etc) will be OK with this CPU, again, at least to start with.

 

Thanks.

1) The cache can be used to install all those mentioned apps onto.

Not sure if Cache-drive can be used within RAID1, but I don't think so.

 

2) For NZB downloads etc. a dual core CPU is recommended, eg an X2 250 or X2 260.

I can use my motherboard's onboard RAID controller to set up two mirrored disks and run all of my apps off of this?  This would be for fault tolerance purposes.  Probably 40 or 80GB disks mirrored.

 

Most likely not.

Most onboard RAID is actually just software raid (Intel ICHRx for example) It actually needs windows drivers/software to run the raid part.

 

If you had true hardware raid, then yes.

 

A few High end serverboards do have LSI or Adaptec (to name a few) SAS controllers built into the boards. These should allow raid.

 

Otherwise you would need an add-on card like an areca ARC-1200.

 

For the sempron part. My guess is it would work, but any higher CPU loads like checking Par files or RAR files would bring your entire server to its knees.. if you plan on running applications, I would recommend dual-core or better.