[wicked]

Good question Andrew, as Silicon Image aren't really that clear. Reading the product brief it only mentions software RAID 0, 1 and 1+0, however as far as I'm aware the controller capabilities are not important if you're going to run software RAID as it's the OS that manages the RAID functionality. You should definitely be able to run software RAID 5 using this controller under Win 2000 or 2003.

If it were me I would go for hardware RAID 5 functionality however Matt is quite correct that the overhead of software RAID will not significantly impact the performance of your solution.

I picked up a new motherboard recently with 4 SATA ports and hardware RAID 5 for $120 so presumably you can pick up a PCI card for a reasonable amount as well.