What is the benefit of a SATA RAID controller?

[Mikey1280]

Hi. I am just curious to know what the benefit of a SATA RAID controller is over the standard Nforce 4 SATA controllers. Are they faster or something than the Nforce 4 controller, does PCI not slow them down, are the PCI express versions any faster? Are they purely just to add more SATA ports?

 

[nightwish]

Hi. I am just curious to know what the benefit of a SATA RAID controller is over the standard Nforce 4 SATA controllers.

Most mobo controllers are only likely to provide support for raid levels 0, 1 and JBOD. A high-ish spec addin card may also provide levels 3 and/or 5.

Are they faster or something than the Nforce 4 controller,

No

does PCI not slow them down,

Yes, potentially. Mot a problem if you only have a couple of 7200rpm disc on there, but the faster your discs are and the more of them you have, the bigger the bottleneck will be.

are the PCI express versions any faster?

Yes. Can't remember actual transfer speeds off the top of my head, but yes PCI-E varients will be faster.

Are they purely just to add more SATA ports?

[/QUOTE]

Can do. Also can provide extra raid levels as mentioned above. Can also use them on an older mobo which doesn't have sata ports

 

[smids]

PCI bus limits at 133MB/s HDU transfer. As the PCI bus is shared, you can really bottleneck.

PCI-E x1 (yes, x1) is 250MB/s each way (500MB/s bandwidth effective) and is dedicated. How much better is PCI-e than PCI? Ridiculously so.

 

[max power]

whoa here a sec lets not forget that there are a whole list of options on a raid card that could make it faster better than the on board nvidia option.

like 64meg of mem a good cpu on the card ect.

not to mention the reasources u WILL free up moving the duties off the mainboard and cpu. just look what happens when u stop using on board sound.

so the short answer depends on the card u choose BUT the better cards cost more $$$$$

 

[smids]

Yeah. My PCI-E SATA RAID card indeed uses less CPU and has a better performance than the nVRAID. (SIL3132 sata card).

 

[Mikey1280]

Smids how much CPU usage do your drives on your controller, will you do the HDtune benchmarking test so I can compare with mine, what drives you got?

 

[smids]

Hmm, HDTune -I've never used that but I do have an HDtach, if that is any use:

Raptor 150GB

 

[Mikey1280]

thanks a lot smids I will get this HDtach program then to compare. Do you know anything about SCSI drives?

 

[smids]

Only the basics, I'm afraid. It's too expensive for me to dabble with it, so I haven't bothered *he says after buying a Raptor 150GB *

 

[Mikey1280]

Lol, so was the purchase of a Raptor 150 justified? My mate wants to get a SCSI setup just wondered if you knew anything about them. Thanks

 

[smids]

Not enough that so I would trust myself to reliably advise you. And yes, I love my 150GB. Easy to setup and very fast. The great thing is because it is 150GB, I can use it as storage and OS.

 

[Mikey1280]

Lol I could never justify buying a raptor and dont have the money! What file size did you set the drive to 128kb,16kb etc or is this only for RAID. Hmmm 2 raptor 150s in RAid 0 now that would be nice

 

[smids]

That's the stripe size and is only for RAID0. Yes, two of these in RAID0 would be nice - but I'm saving my money for a PS3 .

 

[Mikey1280]

Lol, when are the PS3s meant to be coming out? Have you got the normal raptor 150 or the raptor 150 X edition

 

[smids]

PS3 about May (Japan) so July (?) here. I have the Server version (the non-windowed Raptor 150). It's a better drive than the X which costs more, and has half the MTBF (1.2 millions hours v 600,000 hours - Mean Time Before Failure).