If you want the closest you can get to SCSI without actually going SCSI, try the LSI Logic MegaRAID SATA 300-8X controller. It uses the SATA-II spec, so you get 3.0gbps throughput, plus you have NCQ, which can queue up to 32 commands (IIRC). It's still no U320 SCSI setup, but it's much much much better than PATA or even SATA-I, which is half the speed, and normally doesn't support NCQ at all.
Jason On 6/28/05, Matt Garman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tue, Jun 28, 2005 at 01:28:43PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > What's the current box? I mean, I've got one that's doing about > > that without breaking a sweat, and it's about 7 years old. A PII > > (*any* PII) would be enough for this with enough RAM, and you can > > spend the money you'd spend on the new box on drives and fans > > instead. > > The current box is an nforce2 board, Athlon XP1700 and 512 MB RAM. > > Plenty of muscle in the processor-memory area. I meant to > underscore the part of my question about the *storage* subsystem > (mainly the disk controller). > > The current box has no SATA, only on-board PATA. I'm kind of > thinking that I'd like to run hardware RAID5. SCSI is just too > expensive, and hardware RAID for PATA is getting harder to find, as > it gets ousted by SATA. > > Based on the feedback I've received so far, I now think I want to > build a "little" (Soekris, mini-ITX, etc) OpenBSD box for my > firewall/gateway/NAT, and the current box will become just a > fileserver/source repository/backup server. > > So, still, the question remains: what do folks recommend as "good" > hardware for hard disk controllers? > > Thanks again! > Matt > > -- > Matt Garman > email at: http://raw-sewage.net/index.php?file=email