raid 5 my file server

I now have four 300Gb drives and a 3Ware 8506-4LP card in my new Linux server.

All the parts cost just a smidge over a grand from Newegg—With over half of that being the card + hard drives, along with the cheapest processor/motherboard/videocard/etc.

I’ve just set up a new departmental server at work— A Linux box with SATA RAID-5.

Some lessons-learned if you’re thinking of doing this:

1. The 3Ware 8504 is perfect for Linux. Gentoo’s LiveCD recognised it on boot-up, so I didn’t have to lift a finger to configure it!
2. We used 4×160Gb drives. Two for storage, one for parity, and one for live failover, giving us a little room to breathe should something go awry.
3. Get a good hot-swappable enclosure. We got one that fits in 3 5.25 external bays and it should make life a lot simpler if we do have a drive failure.

I’d picked out my Raid card (The 3Ware 8504-LP, which handles 4 Serial ATA drives in RAID-5, and recognized as being very Linux-friendly), but now I’ve had to pay for car repairs, so can’t afford to sort out the server. Curse you fickle fate for toying with me this way!

My theory on this would be to get three reasonably-sized Firewire drives, chain them up, then use OSX’s built-in software RAID. Anyone know if this is a good/bad idea?