storage solution needed, good speed, rather large, very reliable

[edcentric]

Now, I am sure that Tex will set me straight on this.
The machine will be AMD based (either X2 or dual CPU).
We will use a modern mobo.
The mission is image analysis, all 3D work.
I know that standard video cards will work (I don't need workstation stuff).
I may go either SLI or Crossfire.
For the storage the current thinking is:
PCIe raid card
for the OS, a Raptor (or two in raid 0 ??)
for the files, 5 x 500GB Seagate drives in Raid 5.

I want something faster, larger and more reliable than standard S/ATA, but less spendy than SCSI.

[Tex]

Is the write speed not as important as the read speed?

[edcentric]

Neither speed is real critical, but yes read is the most important.

I would just run two drives in R0, but the overhead of the onboard controler is rather stiff.

The guy is a radiologist, so we are working with CAT scan images and such.

[Tex]

I wouldnt raid-0 a customers OS. Just run a single raptor. Or a single 15k scsi drive.

Tex

[Armo]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816131003

they used the pci-x version in this review:
http://www.tweakers.net/reviews/557/1

where a version of the SATA Areca card was on par or outpreformed the U320