Creating a NAS box with multiple raid cards. 1

[chylok]

Hi,

I'm looking at building my own NAS box with some spare parts I have hanging around, I've got two PCI SATA RAID cards, which will be running on a P4 2.4Ghz, 512mb ram system. How do I set up both cards to form a single raid array? Looking implementing raid 5, but raid 0 or 1 will do also.
Do I set up both cards as arrays, and then use software raid to join both array's?
Planning on using FreeNAS.

Any help/advice is most welcome.

cheers,
Chylok

 

[comtec17]

You cannot use 2 independant cards to make a single RAID device. Each SATA RAID controller should be able to handle more than 1 device. I would chain your drives and then configure a RAID 1 device via the controller.

 

[chylok]

I didn't think it was possible to chain SATA drives, I tought it was one dirve per connection. How is this done?

I've got 2 x 4port sata raid cards and 7 sata HDD's. If I can chain the HDD and only use one card that would be great! Failing that is it possible to have 2 raid arrays on one system? Each would be seen as a seperate network drive?

 

[comtec17]

Sorry, should have been clearer, I did not meaning chaining the drives like the old IDE stuff. What was meant was to take each of your drives on one SATA controller and chain them down ports 1 and 2, I was unsure of the amount of drives you had.

You still cannot setup a hardware RAID between 2 controllers