Great information on this page. I have been using it as a reference guide for a couple of weeks now. I decide to join the forum so I could ask some questions.
I have a home built PC that I dual boot between Ubuntu 23.04 and Windows 11. The MSI Z690 Ace mother board does not have am Ubuntu driver for the built in raid, they only support Windows. I have 3 - 18TB HDD in a raid 5 array (which I will grow as needed) and 3 - 4TB HDD in a different raid 5 array. I also have a couple of other disks that I will not raid. I boot off a M2 device attached to the motherboard that I will not raid. My motherboard supports 6 SATA drives, I have 8 drives in my tower, so I need to added capacity to connect more drives. My application is mainly a home media server with a large amount of data, but is not typically high i/o. I rely on raid 5 for protection from hardware failure. I have concern of rebuild time when there is a HDD failure given the size of the 18TB HDD array.
The system is overly powered CPU/RAM/GPU to allow many years of growth. So, I want to do the same with my storage subsystem. I may have to go to external storage at some point, but I don't expect that for a few years. I only have one PCI slot that is accessible remaining and it is just above the power supply. I have a high air flow cabinet (Corsair 7000D AIRFLOW Full-Tower ATX). I am concerned about the space for an additional 40mm fan to cool the raid controller.
1) Do I have to go to hardware raid in order to access the raid arrays under both operating systems?
2) Do I have to have an additional fan directly below the raid controller? Or will the airflow of the tower be sufficient?
3) If I am planning for years of usage - am I wrong to think that I need a 94xx or 95xx controller for longevity of support? Or could I do something less powerful?
4) Do the newer chips produce less heat in the controller?
5) What causes the controller to produce more heat (amount of I/O, number of devices, other)?
6) If I go with a 16i controller, can I run cables out an empty PCI slot to an external storage device? Or do I have to go with an 8i8e controller?
7) I will expand the 18TB raid 5 over-time, adding additional storage to it as needed.
Maybe I should ask - do you have a recommended controller given my use case? I am OK with spending $$, but want to do so wisely.