[Huppie]

I have NEVER had to drive/fly to fix anything. Never even had to use remote hands for anything. Sure some drives died, but standby drives are in place.

Consider yourself lucky. We thought the same thing, but when a RAID controller died on us recently we really didn't know what hit us. It didn't just stop working, it started by hanging the server every now and then, then after a day slowly corrupting drives, then after a day or two it stopped completely.

[necro]

Im a bit conservative when it comes to hardware like raid controllers. My choice was 3ware. They are by no means the fastest, in fact the performance sucks compared to others. I went to a company that builds storage systems, but will build any kind you want, not locked into any controller. I trusted them when they recommended that by their experience is returned/fails the least. Of course everything fails, so it's just a matter of time. We have tripple redundant storage for file backup... active, 5 minute backup that is ready to be swapped in at one click, and long term. If something goes wrong with the active set or slows down, we just flip a switch and all our app servers use the new system that at most is 5 minutes behind. Old system gets shot in the head, and can be diagnosed off line. Shoot first ask questions later.

[eli]

This is totally anecdotal, but I've personally had far more problems with bad RAID controllers than with dying hard drives.