RAID Controller Advice

[NVP]

**NECRO UPDATE: Post 10**



Hey,

I've bought 4x 2TB Samsung SpinPoint F4 EcoGreen HDDs and I want to RAID 5 them together. They will mainly contain videos but also small amounts (in comparison) of music & photos. No OS.

The problem I have is a lack of spare SATA-II ports on my mobo, plus I read that onboard RAID Chipsets (mine has the Intel Matrix Storage) are not very competent in regards to RAID 5. I will, however, be using the onboard to RAID 0 2x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB unless this is also a bad idea.

I personally know absolute jack about RAID controllers. Would any of you guys who are informed on this subject be kind enough to spec me a RAID Controller please?

I'm not sure what further information you would need apart from I need to set-up 4 2TB HDDs into a RAID 5 array using a PCI-Express Card. Also, if the idea to RAID 0 the 2 500gb drives using the onboard is a bad one, then perhaps I need a controller where I can set-up both RAIDs.

Budget, well I've seen prices of these cards and they range a hell of a lot so if I say ~£100 if a decent one can be had for that amount (hopefully less), but if that's not possible then I'm willing to pay whatever I can to get the best possible one for my needs at the lowest price (up to £200 limit, unless this is still pointless - I'm clueless so any suggestions or advice is welcome).

Thanks guys, any help is appreciated

 

[NVP]

this should do the job .

maybe not.

yeah i read reviews (not many about) which said it wasn't very capable

you should be able to pick up a perc 5/i on a popular auction site for less than £100. i got mine for well under that 3 years ago but they are slightly scarcer now.

try to get one that has a pci bracket and bbu to save yourself some hassle, you'll aso need a sas 8484 to 4x sata fan out cable, which were about £10 when i bought mine. it'll handle around 300mb/s writes, you'll probably get close to 350mb/s reads too with four drives.

lots more info here : http://www.overclock.net/raid-controllers-software/359025-perc-5-i-raid-card-tips.html

Yes, I think the Perc 5/i would be your best bet...

Awesome! Thanks for that, I will get to searching. I understand the BBU is a Battery Backup, some auction descriptions are quite vague but I assume I should be able to tell from the pictures such as in this one here: Link. Is it that extra black box?

 

[NVP]

Cheers jbloggs, will keep my eyes open for a bargain. Zarf already posted that same link, I just haven't got around to reading through all of it yet.

Cheers for the help, much appreciated

 

[NVP]

**UPDATE**

Guys, I need some advice please:

I upgraded a while ago and removed my RAID controller, now I'm trying to add it back in but struggling to get any RAID post.

I've got the Dell Perc 5/i PCIe RAID Controller, and trying to get it to work with a MSI MAG X570S Tomahawk motherboard.


I can change from AHCI to RAID, but no RAID POST. Any advice on things to check or steps to take would be appreciated

 

[NVP]

Oohhh.... OK, that makes sense

I've tried it in two slots, I have a feeling it might be dead then. I'll try having another play tonight and see.

How far along have mobo RAIDs come, could I potentially just use that if the card is borked?

 

[NVP]

Have you covered Pin5/6 of the PCIE connector with some tape? It likely suffers from the SMBus issue

The picture marked "Ghettofied." in the https://www.overclock.net/threads/perc-5-i-raid-card-tips-and-benchmarks.359025/ link shows which pins need to be covered.

Thank you, I wasn't aware. I will give that a go tonight.

Motherboard RAID is fine, but still has the same limitations it always had (tied to specific brand e.g. Intel or AMD, forward compatibility not guaranteed).

Presumably you just want to access the data on your existing drives?

Not fussed about the data, it was just a media drive for TV and movies that my HTPC's and phones used to access in my old house.

As otherwise I'm struggling to see a point of RAID of any sort in a normal desktop PC. (SSDs/NVMe has long since replaced RAID for speed, things like Steam can easily use multiple libraries so no need to "join" disks together for capacity anymore, and in this day and age with hard drives RAID5 is a liability anyway)

It's a bit of a weird one, I have a full tower lian li pc-x2000 with 6 hotswap bays at the bottom, so many moons ago I used that as my network storage with a RAID 5.

Now I want to have some network storage again so thought I'd do the same.

Eventual plan was to get another NVMe for gaming only (already have my OS on an m.2 nvme) and buy a few more 8tb drives to raid together as a media drive I can network.

If there's a genuine need for RAID (or similar technologies) then it's usually for backup purposes, in which case a desktop PC is a terrible location for it - much better with a NAS (Synology/QNAP/Asustor etc), or a self built home server running Unraid or the like

I admit I'm rather outdated on this subject, and it's moved on a lot, so all advice is appreciated.

I know I could buy a NAS, but then I think "well I've got the set-up for it in my box anyway".

 

[NVP]

Another option
Windows storage spaces
Has several advantages over hardware raid
As long as you don't need the raid bootable

Thank you, I will have a look