Mark Lord's recent post about mhddfs has made me think about somthing I've been wanting to do for ages: build an unRaid server. I have absolutely zero experience when it comes to Linux servers (which is why mhddfs is too daunting for me) and this is the reason this solution is so apealing to me.

Now, I'm transforming my old Windows Home Server box to do this. This box contains a Gigabyte GA-G33M-DSR2 motherbord. This board uses the Intel ICH9R as a southbridge.

Since I want to use a couple of WD 3TB drives with this system, I have a question. I know, in Windows, I couldn't use the SATA connectors on the motherboard with 3TB drives since the ICH9 wasn't compatible with disks larger than 2TB. This is also why the early versions of the WD 3TB harddrives came with a small PCI-express x1 card containing two SATA interfaces. Using this card, everything did work as it should.

Now, somehow I've got this idea in my head I won't need to use that card if I build an unRAID system, since this is Linux based, and Linux doesn't case about this ICH9 limitation since it does the disk handling in software. Am I correct here? I cannot find anything online to back up that statement, but IIRC I've read this somewhere once.

Also, anybody got any experience with unRAID? How do you like it?

Thanks!