Promise makes an IDE raid controller that is basically a software solution, it is called the FastTrak, it is not OS independant because it relies on the Windows Driver. It works but the performance isn't great.

Adaptec now makes, or at least did make for a time an IDE raid controller, not sure on the details except it was $550 plus.

I have used several 3ware Escalade IDE RAID controllers, they show up to the system as SCSI devices and have excellent performance for most things, storagereview.com has more information.

There are also hardware IDE RAID solutions, we use one where I work from raidweb.com, 6 60GB IDE drives in RAID 0 (they also do 3 and 5) that comes out as SCSI and connects to a convential SCSI controller.

IDE RAID is a great solution for many applications and is far too often overlooked by ignorant SCSI snobs who don't know anything except that someone told them once SCSI was the way to go. Tragedy really, as most IDE drives are the exact same as their SCSI counterparts internally, and the good IDE RAID solutions only have 1 drive per channel and everything switched past there, so performance really isn't an issue...

- jason "dreaming of an Enlight 8590 with 8 120GB Maxtor IDE hard drives on an 8 port Escalade RAID card"

for personal backups. yeah.