Decent sata 3 raid card..

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Makeroflostsouls

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Jun 4, 2008
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I have the original evga x58 MB so only sata2. Looking to get 2 of the C400's when they come out and raid them. So it only needs to have 2 ports. Would like to stay under 100 bucks. Thanks
 
Buy a motherboard with SATA 6Gbps support? Would be alot better than buying a cheap RAID controller with poor drivers. Besides, the cheaper hardware RAID controllers are quite slow and a single SSD can bottleneck it with IOps already. Onboard RAID for SSDs would be preferred. Intel onboard RAID is the best for this purpose (write caching option).

Your alternative would be something like a Highpoint, but might be lower performance than cheap onboard RAID.
 
Yea new MB be nice.. new MB 250-300...raid card 50-100. I don't want to spend any more money on my 1366 chip.
 
Honestly the motherboard would be cheaper than the RAID card. $200 sucky RAID card, $400 good RAID card, $100 good motherboard with 6Gbps SATA. But probably things like memory and CPU would bring both options at about the same price. In that case, that would mean the new motherboard approach offers you the most out of your money.
 
I believe that motherboard does not have native 6Gbps support, but rather uses a third vendor chipset, which you should not use. The new 60-family chips (P67 / H67) would be what you want, with 2 real SATA/6Gbps ports, and 4 other SATA/3Gbps ports. But those chipsets are bugged and recalled by Intel. Would take up to April for bug-free motherboard to ship. The alternative would be AMD, which offers 6 native SATA/6Gbps ports on SB850 and Zacate platform.

Or buy a LSI SAS2008 controller on PCI-express x8, providing you connectivity for up to 8 SATA/600 devices. In IR mode this would work for RAID0 and RAID0+1 and such; i wouldn't use this for RAID5. But then conventional RAID5 is flaky at best.
 
Adding to sub.mesa's post, P67 has bugged SATA 3.0 ports, and the bug is basically that they will stop working over time. The 6.0gbps ports are fine and a lot of vendors are adding a Marvell SATA 6.0gbps chip too for two more usable ports.

FYI here's my ASUS P8P67 Rig: http://forums.servethehome.com/forumdisplay.php?15-Main-Workstation-Builds

1641402.png

5.05GHz out of the box with VT-x, hyperthreading and etc turned on just adjusting multi and bus, everything else auto.

$190 motherboard so not too bad.
 
To go to Sandy Bridge im looking at a new MB 180-220 and 329 for the 2600K. So over 500 just to get sata 3. Just doesn't make sense to me.
 
Most likely you will get higher performance attaching the SSDs to Intels 3 Gbps ports than cheap 6 Gbps adapters like those Marvell based things. An alternative would be the LSI 9211-4i for around 180$.
Something for less than 100$ will not surpass Intels 3 Gbps ports.
 
$500 - what you could get for your X58 stuff (remember Sandy Bridge can use much less expensive RAM) and then you get maybe 25% more clock speed. Basically what I did except I have a Microcenter nearby so it was a bit less expensive to get into.

One other option may be something like the IBM M1015, but it is pretty picky about motherboards.
 
Onboard is just fine, but if you want something separate:

IBM ServeRAID M1015 from Ebay. No RAID-5 on them but you can't use that with 2 drives, anyway. They do 0,1,10. 8 ports and cheap.
 
If you don't need hardware raid, the asus accessory card with 2 usb 3.0 and 2 usb 6.0 in pci-e x4 format is the bomb.
 
just sold my U3S6... had spinning disk on it though for my WHS... no SSDs... never benched. never had an issue for JBOD though in my case.
 
Make sure you ordered a cable (or two - 4 drives per cable) for it if the card didn't come with it. They are cheap on Ebay but make sure to buy from a US seller only if you want it quickly.
 
Got the card in but it wont work. Getting no physical memory is avaliable at the location required for the windows boot manager. This sucks..
 
Not to be a noob but can you do that before windows. Or an i going to have to stick it in a difrent machine to update it? The card works found my drives, made a raid. Just get that error booting windows on drives not on the controler or trying to install windows. Thanks
 
1. Firmware updates are most comonly done from a DOS bootdisk. Check with the manufacturer's instructions. Should be explained in a TXT file that comes with the firmware flashing utility.

2. Have you entered the RAID setup and created the array? Windows setup won't see it until you define it. There should be a message right after BIOS POST that says something like "Press SHIFT+F2 to enter RAID setup" It will be when the RAID card initilizes at boot.
 
Only firmware, I can find needs to be run in windows. Yes I setup the raid. The card works, just windows wont boot or install with it in.
 
Looking to get 2 of the C400's when they come out and raid them.
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I purchased an LSI 9240-4i card for RAID0 with two Crucial 256GB C300s but an LSI 9211-4i is about the same thing.

I wouldn't do a complex RAID set-up with it but it'll give 4 quality SATA 6G/bs ports and extend the life of my P6T MB.

Hopefully an update will fix your problems!
 
DOA card perhaps? Does it recognize as ServeRAID still, or LSI? What if you try the IT firmware? Lots of people are using these SAS 2008 cards without issue.
 
Makeroflostsouls said:
Tried it in an older amd system and i get the same thing.
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Kind of a bad sign....I'd say.

pjkenned did say
but it is pretty picky about motherboards
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.

At first I thought your error
Getting no physical memory is avaliable at the location required for the windows boot manager
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meant you had run out of memory space on your BIOS/CMOS and a few things needed disabled to make room for the cards BIOS.

But after Googling your error it seems that's not the case and all I've read concluded the card was incompatable with their MB.

I'm hoping someone else will have a trick for ya!
 
Yea I found people with the issue on EVGA forms and they say there is no fix. So i'm screwed. Guess I can try it in my i5 WHS rig and hope it works in it. If not i'll be selling it.
 
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