Decent RAID Controller

Knubje

Knubje

Knubje

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Hi all,

A friend is planning on building a beastly system for storage. However, he doesn't really want to use onboard RAID due to the fact that if the mobo dies, so does his RAID.

He is going to have RAID5 configuration with 6*1TB Sata Drives.

Anyone got a general consensus on what is a good card that doesn't cause too many performance issues? Price ranges are negotiable :)

Thanks!


Edit: Damn sorry mods, but I posted in Optical Storage & Writing rather than Harddrives, can you move it please :)
 
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With a card all you do is move the single point of failure off the mobo onto the card ;). That shouldn't be a problem because the data should be backed up anyway.

While onboard RAID is probably fine for storage the card route does have a few advantages. It's portable for a start which makes upgrading easier but for a for a six disk array it means that the southbridge ports are still available for a boot drive.

It's probably worth trawling ebay for a Dell Perc card but you need to check that it'll work in the target mobo as they are a bit picky. For a brand new buy then something like a Highpoint RR2320 would do but they've shot up in price of late by the look of things.

Finally make sure he's aware that an array of that size won't be recognised by XP, he'll need to use Vista or one of the MS Server OSes.
 
Thanks stu, that's useful info!

He is going to be using Vista 64bit and he's going nuts with the amount of high spec hardware he is using for a single home computer :)
Still it's his hobby and he loves it :)

I've passed on your words of wisdom! Cheers fella!
 
Have you planned a budget that allows for backup of the raid5 array as well or are you depending on the raid card / mobo never dying?
 
If you want a "true" hardware solution, which if you want to use RAID5 you really need for decent write speeds, at a lowish price, try the auction sites for a Dell PERC 5/i 256MB RAID SAS Controller Card, and get the SAS->4 SATA cables with the actual card, which have 2 x SAS ports, will then give you 8 x SATA ports.

Otherwise for a more expensive option look for something from Areca/Adaptec/LSI/3ware (8 x SATA ports), but this will be quite big money, ie. Areca ARC-1220
 
Hey,

So im the friend who is building the "beastly" storage system. I need about 4tb of space left after the system is up and running and plan on using a raid 5 configuration over 6*1tb drives

I have done some research on the cards suggested and i like the Dell PERC 5/i 256MB RAID SAS Controller Card recommended by Jbloggs, However i am unsure as to what kind of compatibility its going to have with my hardware.

Im building this with an ASUS A8N SLI Premium Motherboard with a AMD Atholon 64 X2 Dual core 3800+ processor installed.

Is there anyway i can tell whether or not these will be compatible or not?

I did also look at the highpoint card but it is a bit overpriced at the moment in relation to the 300$ i have set aside in my budget for a card.

Thanks for all the info so far
 
The other option to maybe consider is Windows Home Server but you may still need more SATA ports to get the capacity you want. WHS won't give you RAID5 capability but you can decide what needs to be mirrored on a folder by folder basis. As your storage needs grow you just chuck in more disks and WHS will spread itself across them as it sees fit.
 
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I would also consider the Windows Home Server software for a storage solution. Raid is all about system 'up-time', not about data security. As others have said, you still need to backup your data, and with the sizes that you are talking about, you are not going to be able to use CDs! You are probably wiser to spend your budget on extra drives rather than a raid card. The other thing to bear in mind with a storage server is how fast you need it to be. If you do wish to utilise raid 5 then the onboard raid, or software raid via a server OS is likely to be fast enough. You can not beat Microsoft software raid for compatibility, you can change boards and controllers to your hearts content.

Windows Home Server data mirroring is also worth looking at, as it distributes your data across multiple drive spindles to ensure data safety, and due to the way data is saved even when not replicated you would only loose a percentage based on drive failures. For example in Raid 5 if you lose 1 drive out of the six you propose, you will not lose any data, lose two or more and it is all gone. With WHS (without replication enabled) lose one dirve, you can lose up to 1/6 of your data, two drive upto 2/6 and so on. With replication on, you are likely to need to lose over half you drives before any data loss. Also, as RPSTEWART says, you can add more disks at any time to increase your storage pool seamlessly, expanding a raid array in a similar way is no fun at all.
 
@ stewart can u give me a quick noob guide - whats the most cost effective array and how much of a performance gain say % would that be over a say a one terabyte samsung? (example talking about gpu's I would prob say get 2 4850's)
 
Hey, one last question then as i just got the drives in and the card is on the way... Do i need a battery? Im not sure why a raid card might need a battery or what the advantages or disadvantages of having this are as i think it draws all its power from the slot? This is what i ordered below.

Dell MN985 PERC 5/I SAS PCI-e 256Mb RAID Controller, PERC5/I Serial SCSI SATA (No Battery or Cable Included).

Let me know if i do need a battery so i can get it on the way as well.

Thanks
 
The battery is to keep the cache RAM powered in the event of a power failure. Without it you'll lose any data in the write cache in the event of a power cut, with it then the data will be written out when the box comes back up.
 
If your system is connected to a UPS, I believe it will effectively do the same thing as the battery on the RAID card....
 
Yeah, if the machine is shut down cleanly (either manually or automatically) while powered from the UPS then the RAID card cache will be flushed to disk OK.
 
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