This has been an interesting thread. As I mentioned at the beginning of it I am no longer interested in going with RAID5. I personally believe that with the huge decrease in the cost of storage that it has lost it’s luster as a viable choice for the home user. I have no desire to put all of my eggs in one basket. I have been down that road where I had a terabyte of data all in a RAID5 configuration and if anything happens, I am hosed.

Considering Linux as a software RAID solution, I wonder how many people in the world have intimate knowledge of Linux on a par with some of the contributors of this forum? I’ll bet not many. This is the reason why software RAID5 is not an option for me. Some of you make it sound so easy just to do whatever needs to be done to fix whatever problems might occur. For me this is an impossibility, heck, I was absolutely overjoyed when I managed to get Ubuntu to run on my Intel box equipped with a 8800 graphics cards. I think this was a “let’s celebrate and go get Sushi, my treat” night.

I would also like to use a NAS so as not to have to have a specific computer running in order to see the data that I want to share across my network. I also don’t want to spend a lot of money finding a solution. I have 6 300GB PATA drives just sitting around that came out of the RAID5. Just for fun I have chosen to play with this –
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124036
along with these to put my drives in - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817716034
There are a ton of firmware hacks that will allow you to run multiple drives off of the USB ports or RAID1 if you want. There is also a hardware hack that will let you double the speed of the NAS just by removing a diode.

A raid system is not the answer to total data protection. Corrupted data is just as corrupted regardless of the number of copies you have. To truly protect your data I believe you must do periodic backups to devices that are generally kept offline. I think this is the only way that you can be somewhat sure that your data is safe. Periodic backups, there is no substitute.

I really enjoy this forum; the intellectual power here is truly amazing. You guys rock.