Best Raid card on a budget?

[RussianHAXOR]

Im not a big fan of software RAID at all and i was wondering what you guys felt were some of the better budget Raid cards. I know that there are alot of good ones out there but they are fairly expensive in relation to the price of the drives im using. I was wondering if you guys had any good suggestions preferably under 100 bucks.

I use alot of RAID at work but its all fairly expensive stuff...

 

[Syntax Error]

What RAID level are you looking at? Simple RAID levels like RAID 0, 1, 10, 0+1? Or complex parity-based RAID functions like RAID 5, 6, 5EE, 50, 60?

For the former, any real PCI/PCIe based controller that supports those functions could do. Hell, onboard motherboard fakeRAID would be sufficient for that, especially with ICH10R.

But because you suggest your dislike for software RAID, I'm assuming you're looking towards the more complicated RAID functions (5 and 6)...for your budget, a Dell Perc 5/i would be best for you, and even that would go over your budget a little. As you said from your work experience, this stuff ain't cheap, and if you want something solid and reliable, be prepared to spend a bit more money than your initial reservation price...

 

[RussianHAXOR]

Hahaha. Well i usually use adaptec for my RAID controllers. But the thing is i dont plan on doing anything really any better than Raid 1 or 0 since its only 2 drives. This is on a 680i system fyi. So i really would like some kind of a cheaper solution thats fairly stable and well known to not be a POS. Thats all i really care about. It doesnt have to be fantastic, i just hate software RAID.

 

[geiger]

Something like the 3ware 9500/9550 series might be a good option off of ebay. The perc 5i is another good option if you put forth the effort to piece one together off of ebay.