I've never used one of the 3ware cards, but I recently bought a promise pci
ata100tx2 controller, and it performs wonderfully. I would definetly
recommend the promise cards if you're going to be using IDE (I'm not sure
about the ata133tx2, but I know the ata100tx2 works great). The athlon
sounds good also - but if you're going to be using a promise card (or more
than one), make sure you get a motherboard with 66mhz pci, to take full
advantage of it. I can regularly push 42MB/s to/from an ata66 and ata100
drive in my machine which has 33mhz pci, but according to the promise
documentation, a 66mhz pci setup should do even better.

(just my two cents :)

-Sean

On Fri, Jun 07, 2002 at 08:17:50PM -0400, Michael Richardson wrote:
> 
> I need to build a new file server.
> (istari.sandelman.ca is 5 years old, has an amazing 12Gb on 5 spindles, and a
> whole 100Mhz... yet it works just fine. just no disk space)
> 
> Any recommendations on file servers that people have put together? 
> my local clone store seems to have lost their clue.
> 
> I'm thinking about an Athlon ~800Mhz, 256Mb ram, 3c905 or Intel (on
> motherboard ideally). Then either a 3Ware card, or a pair of Promise IDE
> controllers. I don't know much about the 3ware cards.
> 
> If I use promise IDE controllers, I get a total of 6 drives. (CDrom won't
> be connected once I have 6 drives). 
> 
> ]       ON HUMILITY: to err is human. To moo, bovine.           |  firewalls  [
> ]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works, Ottawa, ON    |net architect[
> ] mcr@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/ |device driver[
> ] panic("Just another NetBSD/notebook using, kernel hacking, security guy");  [
> 

-- 
/~\ The ASCII                         Sean Davis
\ / Ribbon Campaign                    aka dive
 X  Against HTML
/ \ Email!                   http://endersgame.net/~dive/