SATA RAID 5 CARD

[m_cozzy]

I'm after a raid 5 card for my home server. I used to have megaraid 300 in my old machine but this was pcix so was sold when I changed servers. I need a pci express one, 4 drives but more would maybe be nice. I have around £200 to spend.
Shortlist is:-
The areca 1210
3ware 9650SE-4LPM
LSI MegaRAID 8308ELP 8 Port - slightly more but does offer 8 ports

I have discounted the rocketraid as I'm not keen of software raid.

I always thought the areca was a superb card, but it didnt come out too well in a test, who recommended the 3ware. The I read another review who said the 3ware was rubbish!

Any suggestions or anything I have missed?

 

[rpstewart]

I would discount the RocketRAID 2310 (the 4 port one) for the reasons you mention but the 2320 (8 port) is worth considering since while it's not a true hardware card it has a decent amount of hardware acceleration on board. It's not quite as quick as the likes of the Areca but it's still pretty rapid for a cheap RAID5 solution - I can get writes of 70-80MB/s from mine and reads of over 200MB/s (8xHitachi T7K250).

The other one to keep an eye out for is a Dell Perc 5i SAS card, they're picky about which boards they'll work with and need a 16x slot (8x card) but they'll run SATA drives and can be picked up quite cheaply at auction if you're lucky.

 

[m_cozzy]

Hmm interesting, I will have a read up on the RocketRAID 2320. Not sure about cheap though, it seems to be only £20 less than the araca/3ware, but then it does have an additional 4 ports that could be useful

RocketRAID 3510 PCI-e x8 SATA II RAID also looks worth a look, squarely in the same price bracket as the others on my shortlist.

 

[rpstewart]

The RR 3xxx cards are based on the same Intel IOP processors as some of the Areca cards so should be pretty quick.