IDE is not a good technology to use for RAID. You can only talk to one drive per channel at a time. So your read/write cycles would talk to at most two drives at a time, and never to both on one channel at once.
IDE has (AFAIK) more system overhead - it's a dumber interface. Using Linux software raid will work, but I would expect it to be a dog. You're better off going with a cheap scsi card and a bunch of smaller drives. If performance isn't too much of a deal, go with narrow (50 pin) drives - 10meg/sec. For a faster system, go with wide (68 pin) 20-40meg/sec. For better reliability, get a hardware solution. A DPT SmartRaid IV or V, AMI MegaRaid or Mylex DAC series all work well. I use DPT at home, and the AMI MegaRaid and Mylex DAC960PL at another client, all with great success. Hot-swap rules ! Dean. -------------------------Forwarded------------------------ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]@INTERNET To: debian-user@lists.debian.org@INTERNET To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]@INTERNET cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]@INTERNET cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]@INTERNET Subject: Raid 5 advice... I want to put together a cheap server with lots of space, good reliability, performance is not critical. I was thinking of a Debian Linux system with say 4 UDMA 16-20g IDE drives. What is the best kernel and raid tools versions to be using for this, from a data security and reliability standpoint? TIA, Chris