"Poor" man's NAS

[Dominic Lepiane]

Say a fellow wanted to get a multi-TB network file server running for under 
10k, preferably close to 3k, what have folks here tried for large file 
servers on mostly commodity hardware?

I was looking at one of my local PC retailers and I think I can get:

Promise 8 SATA channel RAID card (PCI-Express x4)
8x 320GB SATA drives
8x Promise SATA hot-swap drive bays 

That adds up to about 2300$ CDN and just under 2TB at RAID 6 (if I got my RAID 
levels right).

Now, can a system even be built like this?  Can I find a chassis big enough to 
get anywhere near 8 drives?  Can I power those drives?  How much power does 
it take?  Is there such a thing as a redundant power-supply I could get 
somewhat easily?

Not that the gf or boss would let me buy a system like that, I'm mostly 
curious to find out if anyone here has had any experience running anything 
fancier then a two-drive RAID0 (or 1) on commodity hardware.
-- 
Dominic Lepiane

"When I read of the evils of drinking, I gave up reading."
- Henry Youngman

 .o.
 ..o
 ooo

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 191 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mail.linux-sxs.org/pipermail/linux-users/attachments/20060608/eb837dfb/attachment.pgp