100mb/s or 1gigabit switch for home LAN?

[Deja Q]

I rebuilt my old computer, which includes an integrated RAID 5 controller. I will be putting in three 320GB drives, making it RAID 5, installing Linux... then connecting my Vista PC to it via Samba.

Should I get a gigabit switch to go between the computers and add my router into it...? Or not get the extra hardware and live with the 100mbit connection?

Or should I put on Windows Server 2003 instead?

Thx!

[DaveJ]

1. I'd say the Gig switch is first priority, Although....

I have no idea what your are trying to accomplish :)

Does Windows Server 2003 have any features you need? I need it from my webhost providers which yo may have noticed from my previous posts. But that's not where the money is.

I just found out today the real money is in storage. I couldn't believe it, companies sell FTP storage for an average of $3-$10 per Gig per month (for example: http://onlinebackup.datavaultcorp.com/useraq1.php?mode=pricing). That's about $2000-$6000 per month worth of storage you have in that array!

[Deja Q]

2. Nope. Priority #1 is data integrity, followed by speed -- RAID 5 comes in handy.

The spare PC I've got has a SATA-II RAID controller capable of doing RAID 5.

I thought of doing a dynamic volume span on my Vista Ultimate box directly, but read it may not be easy to recover from if a drive failed (even RAID 5?!?!)

BTW: FTP online storage sux, is slow, and no doubt the EULA would give them free copyright ownership too. (Adobe does that with their online version of photoshop...)

[DaveJ]

3. If it's just for storage I guess just a Linux box would do

On the other hand, you may need 2k3 if you want to install specialized server software. For instance, I would absolutely require an IIS server. There might also be software that serves up video or audio that you might want that only runs on Windows. So it depends on the server application you want.

I think the huge price of FTP storage is just a short phase that may last 2 or 3 more years. The market hasn't caught onto this niche business yet, but when it does the price will drop. Just thought it was interesting. Not sure about copyright issues -- you really think a web host would steal someone's copyright, like publish someone's book that they wrote?

[Deja Q]

5. Yes.

Like crowdsourcing, it's ethically shady to do.

I've already mentioned Adobe's online gig. That alone makes me wary of any online service.

I recall a rumor that Microsoft wanted to take ownership of documents people made in Microsoft Word (this was from a few years ago).

Go to amazon.com or other review sites -- they tell you up front any comments you write become their property. (So you cannot in turn take your work and publish it; amazon would sue and win.)

Some people advised to take my photography to stock publishers. Many of them demand I'd give up ownership. Maybe if they paid me a reasonable sum OR at the very least let me retain copyright...

Everything I've worked for in life I'd worked hard for. I don't see why I should risk giving it all away. For an FTP provider, damn straight I'm going to read their stipulations first.

[RoyGBiv]

4. What are you trying to do?

Recommending specs is pointless without application in mind.

I mean, it sounds like you're setting up a simple file server that serves one machine. I'll suggest that a gigabit switch is overkill for that scenario and that you won't get write/read speeds that utilize even the 100Mb/s.