Adaptec 5404

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toenexx

Limp Gawd
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Jun 13, 2004
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I've been browsing around for a raid controller card to fit my needs. I am looking to RAID-10 eight HITACHI Deskstar 7K1000.C 1TB drives and possibly RAID-0 two Intel X-25M G2 160gb SSD's. So far I have been eyeing the areca ARC-1231ML-2G PCI Express SATA II Controller Card - Retail
 and the HighPoint RocketRAID 3530 PCI-Express x8 SATA II Controller Card - Retail However, after browsing around some more I came across the Adaptec 2258100-R PCI-Express x8 SATA / SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) 5405 Kit Controller Card - Retail and I am starting to learn more towards it because its cheap price and performance. But I have a few questions:

1) Will the Adaptec 5405 work in Ubuntu? I noticed on the official site, it only supports RH, CentOs, Fedora, Mandrake, and SUSE.
2) The ratings on newegg are very mediorce on the 5405 due to heating issue. Does anyone else get this?
3) I can't seem to find what IO processor the 5405 uses, and this worries me. What I like about the areca and highpoint cards is that it uses an intel IOP. Would using the 5405 conflict with Intel SSD's if it didnt have an intel iop?
 
The 5405 has only 4 internal ports (that's what the middle two digits mean: 4 internal, 0 external) so it's probably not a good match for your purposes.
 
Yea I was planning on hooking them up internally. Have any recommendations for a raid controller?
 
Adaptec cards are meant for high air flow servers so if you planned on using one in a desktop case you would need a fan blowing on it or it will overheat. The cards with Intels dual core IOP are slow if you are just using it with SATA drives, they are fast with SAS drives.

Adaptec also has the worst software UI ever made.
 
danman said:
Adaptec cards are meant for high air flow servers so if you planned on using one in a desktop case you would need a fan blowing on it or it will overheat. The cards with Intels dual core IOP are slow if you are just using it with SATA drives, they are fast with SAS drives.

Adaptec also has the worst software UI ever made.
Click to expand...

I have a 4cfm (yes, four whole cfm) 40mm fan on my 5805 and it only goes over 50c when the room's temp goes over 80F with the door shut.
The software isn't bad; it's simple and it works.
 
danman said:
Adaptec cards are meant for high air flow servers so if you planned on using one in a desktop case you would need a fan blowing on it or it will overheat. The cards with Intels dual core IOP are slow if you are just using it with SATA drives, they are fast with SAS drives.

Adaptec also has the worst software UI ever made.
Click to expand...

We have a few 5 series Adaptec cards around and they're actually our fastest performers with SATA drives. They beat out our LSI and 3ware cards quite easily.
 
toenexx said:
1) Will the Adaptec 5405 work in Ubuntu? I noticed on the official site, it only supports RH, CentOs, Fedora, Mandrake, and SUSE.
2) The ratings on newegg are very mediorce on the 5405 due to heating issue. Does anyone else get this?
3) I can't seem to find what IO processor the 5405 uses, and this worries me. What I like about the areca and highpoint cards is that it uses an intel IOP. Would using the 5405 conflict with Intel SSD's if it didnt have an intel iop?
Click to expand...

1. Yes, using the aacraid driver.
2. It will need "some" airflow. If you give it absolutely none, it will overheat.
3. Intel IOP348 (Sunrise Lake).
 
I wouldn't get the 5405, it is not very expandable. They claim you can expand it to 5+ drives, but you would need to buy incredibly overpriced backplains to make that happen.

It is a good unit, however, I will be ditching mine for the 5805 or different model when the warranty is almost up.
 
nowwhatnapster said:
I wouldn't get the 5405, it is not very expandable. They claim you can expand it to 5+ drives, but you would need to buy incredibly overpriced backplains to make that happen.

It is a good unit, however, I will be ditching mine for the 5805 or different model when the warranty is almost up.
Click to expand...

Adaptec 5404 + HP 468406-B21 = $620 retail for 24 ports
Adaptec 52445 = ~$1200 retail for 24 ports and all it really is is a 5805 with an onboard expander and a larger markup

Now, I'll choose to add an expander board to my server when I need the extra ports rather than trade in my controller for a much more expensive one.
 
My HP SAS expander arrives Monday for my 5805. If it works, I'll probably add a second.

The 5805 will overheat if you have zero airflow on it. If you give it some airflow, it isn't an issue at all. In most server cases the PCIe cards get airflow so that is what they are designed for. I actually like this method because case fans tend to be reliable, and somewhat redundant (since if one fails the one next to it is still pushing *some* air.)

Although the Adaptec software isn't amazing, it is pretty darn easy to manage multiple systems with, and it has the VDS service which makes Windows based server administration very easy.
 
novadude said:
Adaptec 5404 + HP 468406-B21 = $620 retail for 24 ports
Adaptec 52445 = ~$1200 retail for 24 ports and all it really is is a 5805 with an onboard expander and a larger markup

Now, I'll choose to add an expander board to my server when I need the extra ports rather than trade in my controller for a much more expensive one.
Click to expand...

I had a hard time finding expanders in general that work with the 5405... So this HP 468406-B21, Do you simply plug the 5405 into the expander and the expander into your HDD's?
 
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