Thanks for the replies guys.  After further reading and 
discussions today, I will use software RAID.  With the 
performance difference being negligible for my use and the 
portability of the software approach, kind of an easy 
decision if I don't mind a little more configuration...

Funny thing is, I trekked it across town to Microcenter 
today and bought drives and a card, and the immediate 
problem is the card is not recognized :-(.  Of all things 
to have problems with...
Even funnier part is I paid more for a card that was 
recommended to have better support.  ugh.  Probably need 
to make another trip.
Of course, also have a little problem with mounting 2 of 
the drives - not as handy a case as I hoped.  May need to 
find an (external?) enclosure of some sorts. (recs 
anyone?!)

Matt - yep, have backups; thanks for making sure.  For 
this new setup, I plan to copy the data to a system I just 
setup for that (another old box not good for anything but 
Linux!).  For my prior system, I was just rsyncing.  Do 
you have a rec for a program that has a better managed 
approach?


On Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:11:17 -0500
  Matt Hallacy <poptix at poptix.net> wrote:
> We use a combination of Adaptec, LSI, and 3ware at work, 
>all three work
> great, 3ware has the least expensive of the three and 
>also has the best
> interface for managing the controller.
> 
> We also use software RAID though, which works just as 
>well (better than
> hardware RAID in some configurations, such as SSD). If 
>you're looking to
> provide uptime or simply a larger partition go with 
>software RAID, if
> you're looking to protect your data, use backups.
> 
> On Sat, 2009-08-22 at 23:36 -0600, Jeff Jensen wrote:
> [snip]
> 
> 
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