ATA/133 RAID-5 Card

[burton]

About a year and a half ago, I bought a Promise SuperTrak SX6000. It has been nothing but problems for me. My 5x120GB RAID-5 Array has died on me 3 times with this card and at the moment my server can no longer boot Windows 2000 with the card installed.

I think its time to get rid of this piece of trash and get something else. My requirements are something that can support RAID 5 with 5 120MB ATA/133 drives on good old 33Mhz PCI.

Any suggestions that are NOT Promise? I'm really turned off to them at the moment.

 

[Sunner]

Have a look at 3Ware's offerings.
http://www.3ware.com.

 

[Pariah]

Your only option from currently sold products is a 3Ware 7506-8(8port) or 7506-12(12 port) which sell for about $365 and $490. If you don't want to pay for current, your only other options are older 3Ware versions of the same 2 cards.

 

[burton]

I have been looking at 3ware's cards, however they don't state clearly anywhere that they support 32bit 33mhz PCI (they currently talk up their support of 64bit 66mhz PCI).

Before I spend the $'s I want to make sure what I'm getting is going to work ;-)

 

[Pariah]

64bit 66Mhz cards are backwards compatible.

 

[DaCurryman]

Not trying to hijack the thread or anything, but I'm in the market for a RAID-5 card for 4x120GB IDE drives (for a new HTPC build). Do all cards cost near $300? I thought it was only going to cost me like $100 max (preferably less).

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: DaCurryman
Not trying to hijack the thread or anything, but I'm in the market for a RAID-5 card for 4x120GB IDE drives (for a new HTPC build). Do all cards cost near $300? I thought it was only going to cost me like $100 max (preferably less).

A card with proper RAID-5 support(that is to say, a dedicated XOR engine) is going to cost you.
I guess there are "semi hardware" controllers out there, but write performance is going to be horrible.

 

[jwkuipers]

I would definitly recomend the 3ware controllers. I have owned alot of them:

2 x 7500-4LP
1 x 7500-12
1 x 8506-12

All are wonderful. I currently have a 2TB array on my 8506-12 with 10 WD2500JB Drives. I have never lost an kb of data with any of the cards. Yes they are a tad expensive, but well worth it. Check out ebay because you can often get a really good deal on them there.