I am trying to evaluate the relative effectiveness of hardware (ie. Hp NetRAID-3Si) versus software (ie. windows NT) RAID implementations. In addition to the cost factor, with hardware RAID being more expensive, can anyone give me an idea of which system is more reliable? Has anyone had problems with NT's RAID system? Any assistance would be appreciated

NT raid's faults lie in it's setting are saved in the registry. For example, a corrupt registry on the primary drive is also written to the second drive. Oops, there goes your volume set, unless you want to spend hours upon hours doing registry hacks. Hardware RAID is much faster, and much more reliable in that NT can fail, but your configs will be saved elsewhere. In the case of some namebrand servers, this data will be saved in a separate NON-DOS partition. I'm not a pro at RAID, so if anyone can think of anything, please say so.

U did not state wether you are utilizing SCSI or IDE. I can tell you this. No software will ever take the place of Hardware in this instance. I use the Promise ATA66 Card, purchased it for under $100, working two matched Quantium 6GB's Stripped, and it "screams". Took the Promise RAID card out and just ran from my BP6 Mobo utilizing ATA66 and noticed approximately a 33% decrease in speed. Ran NT's software Strip and Mirror, and it was a dog. If you are concerned about performance and efficiency, then purchase the hardware. Otherwise you will not be satisified.