NASLite Network Attached Storage

I have an Adaptec (Dell) 2610SA which has been working providing a RAID 5 array for the last year or so. Yesterday when I tried to turn it on I got an error reporting an unknown firmware, then a kernel panic and the card refused to do anything. I rebooted and everything worked fine.

Today it refused to boot again, and only booted eventually after 7 or 8 reboots. Now I'm not sure what this error means. I ran the firmware updater to verify the image, and it verified, but I re-flashed anyway for good measure, but this didn't solve the problem (still failed for a few reboots). Is RAID 5 really so reliable? I have 2TB of data on this array which I can't afford to lose. I'm contemplating scrapping the card and using RAID1 instead. Does anyone have any suggestions/input?

Thanks

Have you added any hardware to the Server? I had Kernel Panic errors on shutdown when I was having IRQ problems with my 2 x 3Ware RAID cards and the onboard gbit NIC. Try switching off plug'n'play in BIOS and set all IRQ assignments to disabled - this worked on my Asus M2N32.

I had the HP variant of the 2610SA and it was pretty good - didn't like warm reboots, one or more drives "fell off" until a cold boot - usually requiring a rebuild.