RAID Card that allows you to add more drives?

[Armornone]

Hi.

I realize that traditional Raid5 format requires that you build the entire array all at once however there are some products like the Readynas from netgear that you can actually start out with lets say 2 drives, then slowly add more drives as you need them until you machine is filled.

For example, if you have a 6-bay machine, you can start with 2 X 1TB drives and keep adding more 1TB drives until your machine is filled. Then, if you want to upgrade to 1.5TB drives, you can keep adding 1.5TB drives until your machine is filled and it will reconfigure to use the extra space.

I was wondering if there was any RAID card that allowed you to build your own system like the readynas?

Thanks.

 

[jwhitt]

multiple options

This is one of those situations where the old standard reply of "it depends" comes into play.

3 questions:

1) what is your budget?

2) what is the use of this nas device what are you sharing out, etc?

3) how large of a system do you want this solution to scale to?


Also a RAID 5 Array requires 3 drives to start with.. you could get by with 2 drives in a RAID 0 configuration then add a drive and convert it to a raid 5 most quality raid cards support this.

Ive got a few ideas in mind they just depend on your needs.

Jason