Im making a server computer, for all my....... multimedia stuff...., and basically, i dont want to spend TO much, but i want most of the money i spend to go into harddrives, i looked at the case i have, and the motherboard im going to use will be
http://www.memoryexpress.com/index.p...ctID=6194&SID=
The plan, is 1 terabyte, but, i dont have enuff SATA plugins on this board, and since i wanted to use 4 250G harddrives, so i thought

Can u use SATA , and IDE harddrives at the same time? and if u cant, is there a SATA Raid controller that isnt so expensive, like the netcell one http://www.netcell.com/products.html
its a the bottom of the page.

FYI, ive never used, SATA, or RAID or w.e, this is ALL new to me, so anything u think that might be useful on my search for a terrabyte computer, would be VERY helpful

I dont know wether your going tower or rackmount , but either way, if you dont need high end video or sound and your just using it for storage , why spend $100+ dollars on an MSI board when for just a bit more you can get an actual server class board from Tyan or Asus or Supermicro that can handle 4 SATA drives and in most cases has all the onboard RAID and everything else options you'll need.

As for chassis's , depending on what your looking to spend Chenbro, Evercase, Codegen, and AIC are all good server chassis's ** Rackmount **

Tyan Tomcat K8E is a VERY GOOD board and is a rock solid preformer for good low cost servers , runs an AMD proc

The chassis i use will be a mod, made completly from scratch, but i need to use a micro ATX board, plus i say that tyan board on ebay, for 250$, not sure how much it goes for usually, i assume more than that, so, thats to expensive , i found a micro, its MSI, and i talked to some guys and they said its a pretty good board, its got 4 serial ATA ports
http://www.memoryexpress.com/index.p...ctID=6524&SID=

Bascially i guess it might not be a server computer as much a storage, i dont ned a high end audio or video, onboard would be fine

processor will be a sempron 2600

Harddrives will be Western Digital 250GB Caviar 7200RPM x4

Memory will be some cheap Kingston 512 3200 DDR SDRAM CAS 3 x2

Which with come to 417.12$ canadian (this is with 1 harddrive, ill add 3 as i get more money)

Whadya think? im not that rich, so, i think thats pretty good for a computer with lotsa Moving space on the harddrive, any suggestions, and NON expensive changes are welcomed

how much do you care for the data?

if you are looking for all out storage... i wouldnt bother putting it into a raid. as that motherboard only supports raid 0 and raid 1

if you stripe the drives... and one fails you loose all of your info

if you mirror the drives you would cut your disk space in half...

the best soultion would be to find mb that supports onboard raid 5 so that way you only lose 250gb to parity.. and you will have a small safty net.

dont bother getting a pci sata raid card... the transfer speeds will kill you...