Raid Mini
Posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 3:09 am
Help Building a NAS – RAID controller?
I have an old Mini ITX mobo with an Eden EPIA M (600 mhz) with 1 PCI slot, I was looking online for ways to turn it into a NAS, and FreeNAS seems like a good choice for the OS. However, I am confused about the interface. I would like 2 SATA drives running either in RAID 0 or 1, meaning I need a PCI card (there’s one slot on the mobo). Do you think something like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816318002 would be compatible with FreeNAS (which is based on FreeBSD).
I guess the bigger question would be how UNIX (FreeBSD/FreeNAS) would handle the hardware RAID card.
I was looking for a card under 30 bucks as well.
The card you list is a software raid or “fake raid”. A software raid card has the raid functionality performed in the driver not hardware. When you have a software raid card you are better off using the software raid built into freeBSD. Freenas makes it easy to setup software raid. You could also use RSYNC to copy one disk to another.
Here is a list of hardware that users have reported on for FreeNas http://www.freenas.org/index.php?option=com_openwiki&Itemid=30&id=freenas_users_hardware
The ST-Lab A-380/390 uses the SIL-3512 chipset same chipset on the card you are looking at. Which is reported to work without configuring the controllers raid which means if you want raid you would have to use the FreeBSD software Raid
I have used this card with FreeNas http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132013 but it is fake raid also. I use it without Raid. It is also more than you wanted to pay.
If you get a hardware raid card it should work fine but it will cost much more than your $30 limit.
X-raid MINI All4 Racing Presentation