new server motherboard with SATA II

[Danny Carroll]

Quoting soralx at cydem.org:
> Loading PCI bus with more plain SATA controllers? Don't expect any
> positive results.

I was under the impression that the promise cards actually offloaded  
some of the work, but I guess that can only happen with raid cards  
that present one disc to the OS.

> How about something like this:
> http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330240176734
> (PERC 5/i SAS RAID controller HBA, PCIe x8, 256MB RAM) -- $120
>
> This should give you ~300-400 MB/s with your 5 drives. It might not work
> with your mainboard, though -- but there's a trick to isolate SMBus pins
> the card edge connector (search the Net).

Definately has potential.
I think I might first focus on a motherboard that has a well supported  
IO chipset.  If I can get over 200Mb accross the whole array then I'll  
be happy.

After that I will look at a decent quality raid card.

-D