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cheap or expensive RAID card?

R

roberttran

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Aug 15, 2002
Messages
1,471
Are the expensive RAID cards worth it? I am looking at a 3ware 9000 series SATA RAID card. I found some other brand cards some by big companies and others by companies I've never heard of. The other cards were much cheaper then the 3ware, but are they as reliable and fast? My machine is a dual P3 1GHz and 1GB ram. I would like to do a RAID 5 setup with at least 4 drives.
 
Companies like LSI Logic, Logic Control, Intel, and Highpoint. Those cards are cheaper then the 3ware cards.

-Robert
 
I only wanted to caution you in case you were thinking of upgrading to an Epox 4PCA3+ mainboard, since you are interested in Raid-5.

Epox has neglected to update the highpoint portion of their bios; therefore, you lose out on Raid-5 when you use large IDE drives. Despite this, I have a very good setup of RAID-0 using WindowsXP's software raid. This was definetly a cheap raid-0 for me. I picked up the 80GB WD drives back when they were $27 (x4) after tax and rebates. I use this setup for running my video games and any video capture or editing. Loadtimes for EQ are within seconds both for logging in for the day, and when zoning. Later on when the 10krpm SATA's come down in price (and if I get a case with more space), I will get two of them. SATA raid is very fast, but you have to remember the 10krpm drives are really SCSI drives in an SATA package versus an IDE in a SATA.

If you have the money to waste, go expensive. If you have other items for which you need to budget, go cheap. You can get still go cheap and achieve a good performance boost, but in comparison with a cheap setup the extra money you spend will most likely not be noticed.
 
If I had to build a rig as of today, I would save up again and look to the future.
Starting with the 775 series of Intel CPU's, to narrow the focus on the new video cards. PCI-Express.
775's

Going to the best of the motherboards for the 775 series (Has wireless built in).
Check out the SATA, RAID 5

And then stock up on the Sata 10krpm drives.
Get as many as needed.
 
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