xRAID disks....

[Wojciech Puchar]

> You do not normally have that much bandwidth even in a modern machine.
> Typical bandwidth for the northbridge/southbridge connection is 1-2 GB/s
> for most machines sold today. (For example just about all machines with
> a recent Intel desktop chipset. The connection between north- and south-bridge
> on those is equivalent to a PCI-E x4 connection (which provides 1GB/s in each
> direction.))

as long as it's not saturated it's not a problem.

>>> with several other devices (which is not uncommon) then the reduced
>>> bandwidth usage can be very useful.
>>
>> true. but not if it's builtin in chipset or on PCI express.
>
> PCI-E controller cards are still fairly uncommon, and many of them

but integrated in chipset - common.

> require a x4 or x8 slot, while most motherboards only have x1 slots
> (apart from the x16 slot intended for a graphics card.)

this slot is usable for anything.
i always take some old PCI card for free for servers. as they don't need 
graphics anyway.


on my 8-disk server i could get 95MB/s from EACH of 8 drives in parallel, 
still having minimal system load.

it isn't anything expensive, quite cheap gigabyte motherboard with core2 
duo and 2GB RAM