recommend me a RAID card

[Chris27]

I have 4x3TB sata drives that I would like to run in RAID 5. Currently I'm using the Intel fakeRAID of my motherboard but I don't really like the idea that my data is attached to the motherboard. I assume that if my motherboard dies or that I wish to move the disks to another computer, I'm SOL right? Also my write performance currently sucks (~35 MB/s peak). I'm currently looking at something like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115100. Although it looks like both Amazon and Newegg just hiked the price from $120 -> $170 on the card . Suggestions?

 

[groberts101]

while it's true that the onboard raid5 performance is dismal in comparison to many cards.. the fact is that you will not lose data if that board dies. You could add those same drives to almost any other Intel board supporting R5 and go right back into the array for data. AMD is a bit tougher in that regard and is where Intel is worth the extra money with much better forward/backward compatability.

That card is decent enough for the money(I bought.. tested.. and returned one).. but Highpoints firmware/driver compatability are spotty at best. And customer service is pretty bad with high numbers of "no responses" posted around the net. IOW,.. after your return policy with the vendor expires?.. good luck.

I'd spend the extra cash for something like this. Comes with sas to sata breakouts too which the Highpoint needs as an extra purchase.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118130

I'd even look at the -8i model for future expansion possibilities. Might be well worth the extra $50 on the frontend. Good raidcards are an investment to say the least. Good luck on the hunt.

PS. comparably priced Areca's would be another good alternative.

 

[nanaki333]

as long as you get another intel mobo, you can move your drives no problem. i moved from my old school q9500 to an i7 920 with my samsung F1 1TB drives in raid0. then i moved said array to my sandy bridge 2600k. THEN moved it to my now, and current, SB-E 3930k system. i've never had a problem with these drives. you just plug them in to your new mobo, go in the bios and set it to raid, and you're done. only thing you may need to change is the boot order.

 

[Chris27]

as long as you get another intel mobo, you can move your drives no problem. i moved from my old school q9500 to an i7 920 with my samsung F1 1TB drives in raid0. then i moved said array to my sandy bridge 2600k. THEN moved it to my now, and current, SB-E 3930k system. i've never had a problem with these drives. you just plug them in to your new mobo, go in the bios and set it to raid, and you're done. only thing you may need to change is the boot order.

Then is any real advantage to buying an HBA card like the LSI or the HighPoint card? These don't come with an onboard processor to handle the XOR operations involved with RAID5 or a cache so how would performance compare to the intel chip on my motherboard? I don't really want to spend $400+ on a "real" hardware raid that supports 3TB drives.

 

[Railgun]

Here's my 4x 1TB on RAID 10. Buy a real card...you'll be much happier. And the same applies in that you can then move it to ANY mobo and not lose the array.

This is an Areca 1880i. Yeah, the writes suck but that's all I can get out of those drives, but I don't care about writes THAT much. Depending on your controller, and your drives, your writes will change a bit between a 5 and 10, with a 10 being a bit better.

Direct...

Cache in use...

 

[ccozmo]

I'm using the LSI 9265-8i with 4 x WD RE4 2TB drives in RAID 5

Speeds are great with the dual core ROC chip doing the parity calcs

400-500 MB/s sequential read/writes

 

[dbcooper1]

You do know that these 'real' RAID controllers fail too, right?

 

[groberts101]

lol.. you mean they could possibly fail just like any other piece of hardware could?

My Adaptec 5805 has had an 8 drive R0 array on it for 3 years straight without so much as a hiccup.

You get what you pay for and the support is top notch when you spend the extra cash.

 

[Railgun]

Not to mention the need to only replace the card, not the whole mobo.

 

[nanaki333]

lol.. you mean they could possibly fail just like any other piece of hardware could?

My Adaptec 5805 has had an 8 drive R0 array on it for 3 years straight without so much as a hiccup.

You get what you pay for and the support is top notch when you spend the extra cash.

i think he was referring to the not-so-hardware hardware raid cards that do not have a cpu and cache on board.

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

+1 on Areca. I have a couple of these and they work great...not cheap though.