After much messing about with software RAID 5 with FreeNAS I have given up. I'm not finding it's a solution I feel my data is safe with. This could be down to the fact I am still a total Linux/BSD noob, but FreeNAS also seems to be locking up my system quite a bit so I don't think it's all my fault

So I am looking for a hardware solution, I am using IDE drives (3 Seagate 250Gb and 1 x WD 250Gb RE) the rest of the setup is pretty bog standard. I think I may use clarkconnect for the NAS part as I already run it as my firewall/router etc...

Any advice? I want it to be cheap as the system is manily made up of parts I already had and the idea of the project is to be low cost but highly stable. I'm not that botherd about speed but so far I have found a Socket 478 P4 2.8Ghz, 1Gb RAM, random MB (think it's an ex-HP MSI OEM from a system that was split at work) and a dodgy D-Link Gigabit NIC.

I could splash out on a LSI MegaRAID i4 they seem to be pretty reasonable on eBay.

Cheers

Cris.