Recommend a Hardware PCI-E 4+Port RAID5 Controller!

[Pandobear]

Hi there

to use the native drivers in Vista you select 'update driver' then 'browse my computer for driver software' then 'let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer' then select Adaptec SATA raid 2610SA. Equally you can select 2410 or 2810 or 21610, it does not make a difference as they are all the same driver file. You may well wonder why your card is not automatically detected as a 2610sa, and this is likely because it is listed within it's bios as a DELL card, as ADAPTEC never made 2610sa retail cards, only OEM for DELL.

You are still better off using the driver that you link too, as this is newer than the bundled Vista one.

I hope that this helps.

Out of interest which manufacturer of hard drive are you using, I would be interested to hear how you get on if it is Samsung as I would like to bottom out my 'reboot' problem if possible.

 

[jbloggs]

...You may well wonder why your card is not automatically detected as a 2610sa, and this is likely because it is listed within it's bios as a DELL card, as ADAPTEC never made 2610sa retail cards, only OEM for DELL...

When I was on the Adaptec website, I found the Adaptec 2410, 2810 or 21610 cards, but not the 2610SA, so I reckoned it was an OEM version...

Out of interest which manufacturer of hard drive are you using, I would be interested to hear how you get on if it is Samsung as I would like to bottom out my 'reboot' problem if possible.

I will use This HDD.....

Thanks for your input...

 

[marscay]

Hi there

Yes, even using a 64 bit OS, you create the RAID array in the cards bios, before getting to the OS, and it will not let you select drives that create more than 2 TB. Adaptecs 'workaround' is to create a number of 'hardware' arrays, then stripe them together in the OS. This does work, however it is very wasteful if you are using RAID 5 as you drop one drive per array. In the end I use the card with one array per drive, then software RAID 5 them via Windows Server.

This works fine, and I get about 50 Mb/sec write speeds consistently, which is fine for my purpose. Again though the Adaptec card really does not like the Samsung drives, and will randomly 'drop' them on reboot. My other drives are Seagate, not WD as I had previously thought, but they detect every time without fail. Again this is not the end of the world, but it is a pain. Have to remember to set 'auto updates' to never, and remember never to reboot, but to shutdown, then restart. Apart from this the Adaptec card rocks!! you wanna buy it?

they sound like crap cards to be honest.

2TB limit, 50mb/s writes and they drop from the array consistently? no wonder they're selling for cheap.

what XOR processor do they have? 50mb/s sounds like it's doing nothing at all.

 

[Pandobear]

2TB limit, 50mb/s writes and they drop from the array consistently? no wonder they're selling for cheap.

what XOR processor do they have? 50mb/s sounds like it's doing nothing at all.

You are quite right, I have it running in software raid 5 via windows server, so the XOR processor (intel 80302) is not being used. As I said, if you use the hardware raid you are limited to 2TB or, have to stripe raid 5 (each less than 2TB) via the operating system.

It is only the Samsung drives that drop from the array, and that is on reboot, once detected they do not drop.

To be fair they are pretty dated now, only SATA 1, but if you want to create a raid 5 array that is made up of 4 500 GB drives then it is a cheap way to do it, using the hardware XOR then you are likely to get around 60-80 Mb/sec.

For me the motherboard onboard raid controllers are the way to go now for speed versus price, unless you need more ports, like the sixteen I get from my 21610sa in my server, then pretty much any card will do as the speed is not important.

So for £34 + delivery, I think that he did ok, and using his selected WD drives there will be no problems, and he can migrate his array from motherboard to motherboard without problem.

 

[jbloggs]

It should also be noted that the 2x10SA series uses a PCI-X interface, and if used via PCI, the data transfer rate with be considerably reduced....

 

[marscay]

So for £34 + delivery, I think that he did ok, and using his selected WD drives there will be no problems, and he can migrate his array from motherboard to motherboard without problem.

true but with some patience and £50 you can get a full blown PCI-E SAS/SATA card with IOP333 and 256mb memory, which actually retails for over £400 retail

 

[R4z0r]

true but with some patience and £50 you can get a full blown PCI-E SAS/SATA card with IOP333 and 256mb memory, which actually retails for over £400 retail

True, but don't they require PCI-E x4 which not all mobos have? Also, bit overkill for home use

 

[Cob]

Played with an AAR-2410SA earlier this week and it only managed 52MB/s with a pair of 36gb Raptors in RAID0.

 

[marscay]

True, but don't they require PCI-E x4 which not all mobos have? Also, bit overkill for home use

yeh it requires a pci-e 16x physical slot and 4x electrical minimum, i tried it under a 2x elec slot in my DFI board and the performance took a huge hit.

as far as overkill ...depends on your needs i guess but at that price the performance is free so may as well take it eh? it doesn't stop plenty buying £500 Areca cards for their home servers ...now that is a waste.

 

[R4z0r]

For me the motherboard onboard raid controllers are the way to go now for speed versus price, unless you need more ports, like the sixteen I get from my 21610sa in my server, then pretty much any card will do as the speed is not important.

For most home uses, I 100% agree. What I found with software RAID though was that if I did anything CPU and disk intensive i.e. ripping a DVD performance would be awful. If you need to do this sort of thing then a cheap hardware RAID card is the way to go.

Then again, when you can pick up stupidly fast RAID cards for around £60 there's a very strong argument for always going with hardware.

 

[Pandobear]

Played with an AAR-2410SA earlier this week and it only managed 52MB/s with a pair of 36gb Raptors in RAID0.

That must have been on a 32 bit PCI slot? If you get a 64 bit slot you can get a cool 10 MB/s more.

I agree with marscay, the 2x10sa have had their day, much better bet to move on to the PCIe cards.

I am surprised that there are no 'low end' sata cards on the market, all that seems to be available are the old SIL 3114, 3112s, which are 4 x sata and 2 x sata respectively. With the increasing use of home servers you would think that one of the manufacturers would come out with 8 or 12 port sata cards on PCIe.

As you say

it doesn't stop plenty buying £500 Areca cards for their home servers

Pretty much any dual core processor in a server will have no problem providing the XOR calculations for software RAID5, whilst still maintaining 50 MB/s + write speeds.

As I say, I am surprised that Silicon Image or Highpoint are not marketing high port count sata cards.

 

[Zarf]

I expect that it's the controller hardware that's the expensive part of them, rather than the PCB layout.
They probably can't make a 4 port card with decent performance for much less than their proper server cards.

 

[Burned_Alive]

Might have to change my plans now anyway because of a change with my graphics cards setup, it's looking like i might only have a PCI-E 1x slot left free, any ideas?

 

[Pandobear]

The only PCIe 1x cards that I have seen are for two sata channels only. Overclockers do the Adaptec card, and Silicon image also make a similar card. From my recollection the silicon image card will 'add' to onboard silicon image controllers to form a larger array, though I haven't seen many motherboards with this type of controller in a little while.

What about a complete change of motherboard? The P45 chipset boards have 8 sata ports on all but the lowest spec boards, these are available to reserve on Overclockers now. They use the ICH10R controller, which might be interesting.

The intel raid controllers have all been 'backwards' compatible to date, so you should still be able to migrate your array in the future.

 

[Burned_Alive]

Only just bought a new system
Might just have to settle for a decent host based card like the Highpoint 2300, reviews seem to suggest it is faster than the adaptec anyway.

 

[R4z0r]

I've now got my Adaptec 2410SA up and running on Vista 32bit (Detected the device fine) with 3 x 500GB Samsung 7200 drives in RAID5. Here's a benchmark to give you an idea of the performance the card is capable of:



Not amazing but good enough for my needs and has fixed my original problem of not being able to do disk and CPU intensive tasks together!

 

[jbloggs]

Not amazing but good enough for my needs and has fixed my original problem of not being able to do disk and CPU intensive tasks together!

That's good to hear....

The reason I bought an Adaptec 2610SA was simply to add more SATA ports to a small (file) server I am building (and the possibility of different RAID setups), which only has PCI, high data transfer rates are not needed, I paid £34 (+ del) for mine, which is more than adequate for my needs....

For interest, I did look for the Perc 5/i ( PCI-E SAS/SATA card with IOP333 and 256mb memory), however, I only found one such card in the US, and that was just just under £70 (+ del), on top of that you need to buy SAS to SATA cables (if I am not mistaken)....for somebody who needs the higher data transfer rates (and who has the correct PCI-E slot), this is certainly a cheap way to get it, rather than pay out £100s for something from Areca etc.

I did have an Areca ARC1110, which I used on an Asus workstation board in a PCI-X slot, and it was a really nice card, but was expensvie.....over £200....and at the end of that day...£s is what it is all about!

 

[marscay]

For interest, I did look for the Perc 5/i ( PCI-E SAS/SATA card with IOP333 and 256mb memory), however, I only found one such card in the US, and that was just just under £70 (+ del), on top of that you need to buy SAS to SATA cables (if I am not mistaken)....for somebody who needs the higher data transfer rates (and who has the correct PCI-E slot), this is certainly a cheap way to get it, rather than pay out £100s for something from Areca etc.

they use multilane connectors, cost about a tenner each for a ML -> 4 sata cable.

i'm actually looking for a second perc ....hard to source atm & normally they're easy to get a hold of in the UK.

 

[Pandobear]

i'm actually looking for a second perc ....hard to source atm & normally they're easy to get a hold of in the UK.

Ah, so it is probably you that I keep bidding against. I notice that over on the auction site there are lots of the AAR2x10SA going for no money, and no Perc 5/i. I would say that you have done too good a job of convincing us all marscay!

 

[marscay]

even an online store i know of that usually have stock have been cleared out for awhile now, it's perc mania over the last few mths.