SB750 RAID 5, how well does it work?

[Valset]

Experience has taught me that RAID arrays are best left to dedicated cards. I have been told that I am behind the times (this is true) and that motherboards now provide true raid and are not a bad option. I am looking at upgrading to a 790FX-750SB board and a RAID setup (either a RAID 0 with a dedicated backup disk or a RAID 5) but I am nervous about how much I can trust a motherboard based solution.

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Eh, onboard RAID controllers tend to be given a second (or third seat) to hardware RAID controllers. For RAID 0 or 1, or even 10, I suppose onboard "FakeRAID" controllers aren't too bad since they're relatively simple, but something as complex as RAID 5, I wouldn't trust motherboard controllers with to be honest. You'll also get CPU overhead with these onboard controllers, and there are migration issues that would keep you tied to the specific chipset, or in some instances, the specific motherboard model if you ever wanted to move the RAID array to a different computer, an issue that you wouldn't get with a dedicated RAID controller card, not to mention strange performance from certain chipsets (ICH9R/10R is generally good, but NVIDIA RAID is pretty sketchy and frankly an afterthought by the board designers). :eek:

Your hunch is correct that RAID 5 on onboard RAID isn't a wise choice, and I would stay away and stick with hardware RAID or well-implemented software RAID such as mdadm, but that's also another different discussion.