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<p>Raj,</p>
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<p>After having nightmare type experiences with a Intel soft-raid solution on my motherboard, I upgraded to a LSI SAS-9271-4i a few years back. It's been rock solid - never had to worry about it for a second. I run 4 drives in a RAID5 set under dual boot Linux and Win7. I've recently built up a new main workstation and used my old hardware to upgrade my permanent Linux server. So that card and it's drives are still running RAID5 under Linux full time. I've upgraded to a LSI SAS-9361-8i in my new machine with 6 drives in RAID5 and have had no issues so far in a months worth of use. Eventually those will be converted to SSDs. The only con I can think of is the BIOS Firmware takes quite a long time to scan the drives adding to boot time - especially the 9361. But I leave my machines running full time so it's not an issue for me.</p>
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<p>I know both are probably out of your stated price range. However the price for piece of mind was worth it for me.</p>
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<p>I can answer any specifics you have at MakerFaire or if you make it 3 for 3 to the Oct AHCS meeting.</p>
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<p>-Alan</p>
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