[svlug] storage array questions

[Brian J. Tarricone]

Hi all,

I recently bought four 400GB SATA drives on the (decently) cheap, and
I'm looking to do RAID5 on them to replace an older 1TB array that's
getting full, and isn't RAIDed at all (just LVM with a 'JBOD'
configuration).

I'm at a bit of an impasse as to what my attachment options are at the
moment.  Originally I planned to build a new low-power storage box, but
I can't really justify spending the money on that right now (while I
do need the extra storage now).

What I do have now that might be useful:

* 1.3GHz Athlon desktop machine, lots of drive bays, but no SATA and
only PCI (no PCIe); also has USB2, Firewire

* 1.8GHz Sempron HTPC/PVR box under my TV, one spare SATA port out of
two total, not enough internal storage, one free PCI slot (fortunately
I *don't* need half-height cards), USB2, Firewire

My original intent was to retire the 1.3GHz box, as I don't use it so
often and it's just sitting there using electricity.  I wouldn't mind
leaving the HTPC box on all the time; it's a bit more energy-friendly
and it's on a decent amount of the time as it is.

I've looked at eSATA and SATA port multipliers, but my understanding is
that port multiplication requires support from the host adapter -- I
don't think the SATA host on the HTPC supports this.  I'm also not sure
this is what I really want; I'm getting a little confused by all this.
The hardware seems kinda expensive; I'd prefer to spend no more than
another $200 on this project, preferably much less.

In my searches, I've only been able to find PCIe 4-port (e)SATA cards;
the PCI-only cards seem to have only 2 ports, and I'm having trouble
finding information about whether or not these support port
multiplication.

I've also thought about external Firewire or USB2 enclosures, but the
ones that take 4 drives seem pretty expensive, and I don't want to
separately power 2 or 4 enclosures.  I've thought about going to Weird
Stuff in Sunnyvale to pick up an old Sun 4-drive SCSI enclosure to
modify, but I'm not really sure what other hardware I need for that
route.

My other option, of course, is to SATA-ize my 1.3GHz box, and put the
drives in there, even if only temporarily, but, as I mentioned above, I
want to retire this machine.

Anybody run across any solutions or could point me in the right
direction?  I'm of course looking for something cheap, and I'd prefer
an external solution so I don't have to keep my desktop machine running
anymore.  But even just some pointers to things I might not have
considered would be a help.

Thanks,
Brian