NASLite Network Attached Storage

Hi,
Completely new to NAS, to NASLite, to Linux. I figured out that it was time to have a file server, and to my surprise there's NAS,

Having my head turned towards NASLite I would like to know a few things:

1. I understand that it is not advisable to use MoBO's with SATA/RAID onboard, like several Intel boards have, because Linux does not recognizes the drives as configurated.
2. Looking at certain MoBo's I would like to use -for instance- Intel DG965RYCK, with a PCI-X Adaptec entry level RAID Controller 1420SA
3. I could not find this controller in the hardware list. Does that mean that I cannot use this -rather cheap- controller?
4. Being a newbee to NAS and Linux, and to RAID hardware (quite a lot of experience with Intel 'driver managed' RAID boards!) how is the RAID array being build? Is this through NASLite, or earlier through hardware, i.e. BIOS setup?
5. Any problems to find ahead setting up a RAID 10 configuration with Barracuda 7200/10 250Gb HD's?
6. Any wise advise for a inexpereanced hardware-geek-wanabee?

Thanks for answering.
P.

I'm a relatively new adoptee myself, but I'll attempt to answer your questions:

1. It's not that it's unadvisable, it's just that NASLite-2 will not "see" the drives in a RAID configuration, it will see separate drives;
2. If the card is not in the Hardware RAID section, it will not perform RAID functions. e.g. I have a SiI 3114 PCI SATA card - it's only a driver assisted RAID card, not a true hardware RAID card. I can attach 4 SATA drives to it but NASLite-2 will not see any RAID configuration I might have setup in the card BIOS;
3. See 2;
4. All RAID operations must be performed through the RAID card BIOS;
5. Probably not - last night I managed to flash the firmware on my LSI MegaRAID i4 (4 x IDE port, up to 8 drives hardware RAID card) to the lates spec and it supports RAID 10 - so conceivably I could use 8 x 250GB to make a 1TB R10;
6. Have fun! Get your basic system functioning well then add extras like RAID. I went USB as my motherboard supports boot from USB HDD and it's a nice and neat solution.

Nick.

Thanks for reading, thanks for the comprehensive answering.

I found the following PCI-e hardware card:
Highpoint's RocketRaid 2300
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/

Controller Specifications:
PCI Express x1 (x4, x8 and x16 slot compatible)
SATA II and SATA I hard drive support
Up to 300MB/s for each SATA II drive port
Support RAID level 0, 1, 5, 10 and JBOD
Online Capacity Expansion and Online RAID Level Migration (OCE/ORLM)
Native Command Queuing (NCQ)
SAF-TE enclosure management
Hard drive activity and Failed LED support
Staggered drive spin-up support
Hot swap and hot spare
Write-through and write-back cache support
Quick and Background initialization for quick RAID configuration
Online array roaming
BIOS booting support (INT13)
64bit LBA for over 2TB support
Automatic RAID rebuild of failed drive
S.M.A.R.T drive monitoring for status and reliability
Browser-based RAID management software
Command Line Interface (CLI)
SMTP for email notification
Operating system support for Windows, Windows x64 Editions, Linux (open source) and FreeBSD (open source)

Linux Drivers:
Fedora Core 1- 6 (x86 and x86_64)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0,3.0 U1,4.0,4.0 U1/U2/U3/U4 CentOS
SuSE Linux 8.1/8.2 (i386), 9.0 - 10.1 (i386 and x86_64)
SuSE Enterprise 9, SP2, SP3
Linux Kernel v2.4.x and v2.6.x ( x86 and x86_64 )

Would this thing do the trick inside the NASLite driven NAS?

P.

Start by referencing the hardware guide. If it isn't in there then it will probably not work.

Thanks for reading and writing.

I am beginning to understand the importance of the Hardware Referance Guide, because I assume that it is NOT possible to load other drivers then provided by the OS. So even if a controller has up-to-date downloadable Linux drivers, the hardware will not function, because one cannot sneak these drivers in.

Is my assumption correct?

My question now is, whether other drivers then the list, like the driver for the RocketRAID controller(s) will be added sooner or later.

P.